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JONATHAN SWIFT • 1667: He Was Born in Dublin and His Father Died Just Two Months Before He Arrived

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JONATHAN SWIFT • 1667: He Was Born in Dublin and His Father Died Just Two Months Before He Arrived Anglo-Irish satirist, essayst, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories!), poet and cleric, he became Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. He is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language with his huge success Gulliver’s Travels (1726). SECTION SUMMARY 2 JONATHAN SWIFT • 1667: he was born in Dublin and his father died just two months before he arrived. Without steady income, his mother struggled to provide for her newborn and in an effort to give him the best upbringing possible, she gave him over to Godwin Swift, her late husband’s brother and a member of the respected professional attorney and judges group Gray’s Inn. • 1674: his uncle enrolled him in the Kilkenny Grammar School, probably the best school in Ireland at the time, a rigorous and challenging private school. • 1682: he commenced his undergraduate studies at Trinity College in Dublin. In 1686, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree and went on to pursue a master’s. 4 JONATHAN SWIFT • 1688: the Glorious Revolution spurred Swift to move to England and he accepted a position as Sir William Temple’s secretary in Surrey’s Moor Park. Temple was an important retired Whig statesman and a scholar : Swift’s talent for argument served him well but after some years in his service Swift returned to university, this time to Oxford. An increasing discord with Temple would eventually lead to Swift’s return to Ireland. 1690: he became a victim to Ménière’s disease, a disorder of the inner ear which affected his hearing and balance to an increasing degree, in one ear in particular. Characterised by fits of vertigo and giddiness, it would continue to plague him throughout his life with progressive hearing loss. 5 JONATHAN SWIFT He met Esther Johnson, then eight years old, the fatherless daughter of one of the house- hold servants. Swift acted as her tutor and mentor, giving her the nickname “Stella”, and the two maintained a close relationship for the rest of Esther’s life. 1694: ordained as an Anglican minister, he was sent to Kilroot, which he left shortly after due to the bad working conditions there. 1695: he returned to work for Sir William and completed his works The Battle of the Books (1697) and A Tale of a Tub, written for the universal improvement of mankind (1704). 6 JONATHAN SWIFT 1699: when Sir William Temple died he returned to Ireland and accepted a position in the church. During this time Esther Johnson moved to Trim, so they lived close by. With his previous books and Dissensions in Athens and Rome (published anonymously in 1701) he became successful and won the corresponding respect as a writer. 1710: he became politically active for a short time and wrote sharp-tongued political satire. That year and the following year, he was the editor of the Tory weekly “The Examiner”. 7 JONATHAN SWIFT 1713: made Dean of St. Patrick’s he went back to Ireland. The Whigs returned to power so, disappointed for having to live “like a rat in a hole” , he wrote in support of Irish causes. Although he was still in contact with Esther Johnson, it is documented that he engaged in a romantic relationship with Esther Vanhomrigh (whom he called “Vanessa”). His courtship with her inspired his long poem “Cadenus and Vanessa” (1726). 1724: with patriotic works like Drapier’s Letters and, a few years later, A Modest Proposal (1729) he began to be considered a national hero. 8 JONATHAN SWIFT 1726: back in London, benefiting from the help of several friends, he published anonymously Gulliver’s Travels. The title of the book was actually much longer than this, as we will see in a few moments, and the book was an immediate hit! Three printings were made of it in 1726 and a new printing in early 1727 as well as French, Dutch and German translations in the same year. It has never been out of print since! 1728: Esther Johnson died. Swift prayed at her bedside but could not bear to be present at the end. Death became ever present in his life from this point. 9 JONATHAN SWIFT 1738 – 1742: Will Durant described Swift’s final years… “Definite symptoms of madness appeared in 1738. In 1741 guardians were appointed to take care of his affairs and watch lest in his outbursts of violence he should do himself harm. In 1742 he suffered great pain from the inflammation of his left eye, which swelled to the size of an egg; five attendants had to restrain him from tearing out his eye. He went a whole year without uttering a word.” 1745: Swift died in Dublin and he was laid to rest next to Esther Johnson inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. 10 12 GULLIVER’S TRAVELS (1726) Gulliver’s Travels is a novel which is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the travellers’ tales. A transparently anti-Whig satire with copious references to people and episodes of the time, its major themes are nevertheless out of time: ❑ treachery and dishonesty inside the government; ❑ petty differences between religions; ❑ corruption and corruptibility of human nature. Published only seven years after Defoe’s wildly successful Robinson Crusoe (as a systematic rebuttal of it!), its protagonist appears to be an amazingly modern “round character” who turns from a cheery optimist to a pompous misanthrope. 13 THE FOUR BOOKS Book I: Gulliver is shipwrecked on Lilliput, where he awakens to find that he has been captured by very small people while in Book II he is abandoned on Brobdingnag, a land of giants, which he leaves inside a cage snatched up by an eagle. In Book III pirates leave him adrift at sea to discover the flying island of Laputa as well as others inhabited by scientists, philosophers, ghosts of historical figures while in Book IV a mutinous crew abandons him on an island ruled by the Houyhnhnms, civilized wise horses served by the Yahoos, dirty, despicable human-like creatures. 14 INTERPRETATIONS The novel has been the recipsient of several designations: ❑a Menippean satire characterised by attacks on mental attitudes rather than on specific individuals; ❑a children’s story, especially in the first two books where each part is the reverse of the preceding part; ❑ a forerunner of the modern novel in terms of storytelling and construction based on contrasts, progressions and shifts; ❑ even a proto-Science Fiction, in its dystopian vision of human society. 15 A DYSTOPIAN NOVEL 17 th c. writers UTOPIA travellers find IMAGINARY natural vs EUROPEAN civilised SOCIETIES uncorrupted WORLD corrupted Jonathan Swift DYSTOPIA Gulliver finds IMAGINARY civilised = EUROPEAN civilised SOCIETIES corrupted SOCIETY corrupted 16 SWIFT vs GULLIVER Although in many cases Gulliver seems to be Swift’s spokes- man, he is the first character Swift makes fun of! Gullible, as his name suggests, he ends up being a misanthrope… which Swift was most certainly NOT. The words of Swift’s epitaph, written in Latin by the author himself and translated by the Irish poet W. B. Yeats, say that “Swift has sailed into his rest. Savage indignation there cannot lacerate his breast. Imitate him if you dare, world-besotted traveller. He served human liberty.” 17 A MODEST PROPOSAL (1729)... A Modest Proposal, a satirical essay published by Swift anonymously, is a case in point: far from showing disinterest in his fellow countrymen, Swift was set upon solving the nation’s societal gap, or at the very least forcing the Irish to take a harsh look at the reality of their economic conditions. Fed up with ❑ the ineptitude of Ireland’s politicians, ❑ the degrading poverty in which a huge number of Irish citizens found themselves, ❑ the boisterous tyranny of the British ❑ the hypocrisy of the wealthy he shocked his audience by suggesting that… 19 … to SHOCK & REFLECT. … the impoverished Irish might well ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food to the rich since “a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust”. Using scientific, methodological language to present statistics of human beings, the essay progresses through a series of surprises that first shocks the reader and then causes him to think critically not only about policies, but also about motivations and values. 20 LEGACY AS A WRITER… Swift was one of the most renowned authors and political writers of the 18th century, possibly the greatest satirist in the English language: ❑ with Gulliver’s Travels he transformed models such as utopian writing, political pamphleteering and social critique with his dark and uncompromising vision of the human condition; ❑ with A Modest Proposal he has left as his legacy the idea of encouraging political writers to make a lasting impact on their audience in order to bring about social change. 22 …& AS A MAN. The bulk of Swift’s fortune (twelve thousand pounds) was left to found a hospital for the mentally ill, originally known as St. Patrick’s Hospital for Imbeciles, which opened in 1757, and which still exists today as a psychiatric hospital. Swift’s generosity and forward-thinking vision of a ‘home for fools and mad’ left a lasting impact on mental healthcare in Ireland through the creation of SPMHS (St. Patrick’s Mental Health Services). the country’s first mental health hospitals, now Ireland’s largest independent not-for-profit mental health service provider. 23.
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