INTRODUCTION

JONATHAN SWIFT

By-

Kavisha Alagiya
Visiting Faculty at Department of English
M. K. Bhavnagar University
 LIFE

• Swift was born in Dublin, of English parents, in 1667. His father died before he was born; his
mother was poor, and Swift, though proud as Lucifer, was compelled to accept aid from
relatives, who gave it grudgingly.
• His connexion with Ireland was maintained more or less closely till the day he died. (Irish
Political Hero)
• A distant relative, Sir William Temple, who helped him financially, was his patron. Temple
was a statesman and an excellent diplomatist.
• He seems to have been very wretched both at his school at Kilkenny and at Trinity College,
Dublin, where his experiences went to confirm in him that savage melancholia which was to
endure all his life.
• Temple gave him the position of private secretary largely on account of the unwelcome
relationship. (Long)
• Much of his distemper was due to purely physical causes, for he suffered from an infection of
the ear that ultimately touched his brain and caused insanity.
Kavisha Alagiya
 THE MAKING OF JONATHAN SWIFT

• Temple was a Whig and a supporter of the Ancients in the ancients vs Moderns
controversy, and it was in support of Temple that he wrote his first touch of bitterness
and showed itself in his first notable work, “The Battle of the Books”.
• The Battle of the Books depicts a literal and allegorical battle between books in the
King's Library (housed in St James's Palace at the time of the writing), as ideas and
authors struggle for supremacy.
• The “The Battle of the Books” was written as a prologue to another satire - “A Tale of a
Tub”. (A Tale of a Tub is the only religious allegory that he wrote)
• A Tale of a Tub was about three sons, Peter, Jack and Martin, who were all given a coat
each by their father, with strict instructions on how to use the coat. But the sons misuse
the coats. It's an allegory for how the Christian denominations misused Christianity. All
this became very famous or rather notorious in England.
Kavisha Alagiya
 JONATHAN SWIFT - SATIRIST

• The work brought him into notice as the most powerful satirist of the age, and he soon
gave up his church to enter the strife of party politics.
• Swift devoted the gigantic powers of his pen, became a political star of some magnitude,
and, after the manner of the time, hoped for substantial rewards.
• For several years, Swift was one of the most important figures in London. The Whigs
feared the lash of his satire; the Tories feared to lose his support. He was courted,
flattered, cajoled on every side. (The two political parties found in the time of Charles II.
The Whigs were the Liberals led by Earl of Shaftesbury and the Tories were the
Conservatives who were Royalists.)
• He might have become a bishop, but it is said that Queen Anne objected to A Tale of a
Tub and had doubts about his orthodoxy and in the wreck of the Tory party in 1715 all he
could save was the Deanery of St Patrick's, in Dublin, which he had received in 1713.
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 LATER PHASE

• His best known literary work, “Gulliver's Travels”, was done here; but the bitterness of
life grew slowly to insanity, and a frightful personal sorrow, of which he never spoke,
reached its climax in the death of Esther Johnson, a beautiful young woman, who had
loved Swift ever since the two had met in Temple's household, and to whom he had
written his “Journal to Stella”.
• An embittered man, he spent the last thirty years of his life in gloom, and largely in
retirement. His last years were passed in silence and, at the very end, lunacy.

Kavisha Alagiya
 LIFE OF SWIFT - LONG

• In each of Marlowe's tragedies we have the picture of a man dominated by a single

passion, the lust of power for its own sake. In each we see that a powerful man
without self-control is like a dangerous instrument in the hands of a child; and
the tragedy ends in the destruction of the man by the ungoverned power which
he possesses. The life of Swift is just such a living tragedy.
• He had the power of gaining wealth, like the hero of the “Jew of Malta”; yet he used it
scornfully, and in sad irony left what remained to him of a large property to found a hospital
for lunatics.
By hard work he won enormous literary power, and used it to satirize our
common humanity. He wrested political power from the hands of the Tories, and
used it to insult the very men who had helped him, and who held his fate in their
hands. By his dominant personality he exercised a curious power over women,
and used it brutally to make them feel their inferiority.
Kavisha Alagiya

(Long)
 LIFE OF SWIFT

“Being loved supremely by two good women, he brought sorrow and death
to both, and endless misery to himself. So his power brought always tragedy
in its wake. It is only when we remember his life of struggle and
disappointment and bitterness that we can appreciate the personal quality
in his satire, and perhaps find some sympathy for this greatest genius of all
the Augustan writers.”
(Long)

Kavisha Alagiya
 MISANTHROPE

• In Swift’s comments on his book, he wrote to Alexander Pope making several points.
• Firstly, he says that the chief end of all his labours is “ to vex the world rather than divert it”
• Secondly, he declares that he has “ever hated all nations, professions and communities an all
his love is toward individuals”
• In explaining this remark, he says that he hates the tribe of lawyers, physicians etc. ,but that
he loves particular lawyers and physicians. He goes on to say in this connection “I heartily
hate and detest that animal called man”, although he heartily loves Jhon, Thomas.
• Thirdly, he asserts that he does not believe in the definition of man as animal rationale and
that in his view man is only rationis capax. In other words, he does not believe that man is a
rational animal , though he does believe that man is capable of becoming rational if he makes
the necessary effort.
• Having expressed his views, Swift adds that upon this great foundation of misanthropy
(though not Timon’s manner) the whole building of Gulliver’s Travels is erected.
Kavisha Alagiya
Kavisha Alagiya
 SUMMARY
• November 30, 1667 – Swift was born
• 1688 - became the secretary for Sir William Temple
• 1694 - took religious orders in the Church of Ireland and then spent a year as a country parson. [Meanwhile, he had begun to
write satires on the political and religious corruption surrounding him, working on A Tale of a Tub, which supports the
position of the Anglican Church against its critics on the left and the right, and The Battle of the Books, which argues for the
supremacy of the classics against modern thought and literature.]
• 1696 - Returned to Temple's service. Temple died in 1699.
• 1702 - received a doctorate degree in divinity from Trinity College in 1702
• 1707 - Involved with The Tattler (pseudonym Issac Bickerstaff)
• 1709 - went to London to campaign for the Irish church but was unsuccessful.
• 1710 - became a member of the more conservative Tory party
• 1713 - became dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin
• 1726 - Wrote Gulliver's Travels
• 1729 - Wrote "A Modest Proposal."
• 1742 - Established site for insane asylum (St. Patrick's Hospital).

Kavisha Alagiya
 WORKS CITED

• Albert, Edward. History of English Literature. Ed. James Alfred Stone. Harrap, 1979. 10
July 2022.
• Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Litearture. Vol. 2. Allied Publishers, 1969. 2
vols. PDF. 10 July 2022.
• Long, William J. English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the
English-Speaking World. Delhi: AITBS Publishes India, 2016. Book. 10 July 2022.
• Vallath, Kalyani. A Bird's eye view of British and American Literature. Trivandrum:
Bodhi Tree Books, 2018. Paperback. 10 July 2022.

Kavisha Alagiya