A Preface to Swift

ISBN-13: 9780582289789 / Angielski / Miękka / 1998 / 264 str.

Keith Crook

Opis

This text follows a chronological account of Jonathan Swift's life. It focuses on "Gulliver's Travels", but also discusses other works including early satires, political writings, poems and letters. Detailed chronological charts place Swift's life and works in political and cultural context.

Spis treści

Part 1: The Writer and his Setting  1. A Brief Life of Swift.  A sketch of the man and of some significant issues
The Anglo-Irish 'Ascendancy'.  The formative context for Swift.  Secretary to the Temple, 1689-1699.  Literary and priestly ambitions.  First satiric works: "The Battle of the Books" and "A Tale of a Tub".  The wit and the ministers, 1700-1714.  The pull of England.  London life: "The Journal of Stella".  Archbishop King and Dean Swift, 1713-1729.  The genesis of "Gulliver's Travels".  Choice friends.  2. Politics and the Individual.  Church and monarch
Political parties and issue groups.  Swift's change of direction.  Swift's definitions of party.  Harley's patronage.  St. John and Harley.  "The Examiner".  "The Conduct of the Allies".  End of the ministry.  Preferment: Bolingbroke and Oxford's treatment of Swift.  Bolingbroke on Swift.  Oxford and Swift.  Oxford's contribution to politics. 
3. Swift's London and Ireland.  Swift's audience.  The reading public and literary taste.  Literacy.  The coffee house London illustrated (1708-1714).  "Bickerstaff Papers", 1708.  "The Tatler", 1709.  "A Description of the Morning", 1709.  "A Description of a City Shower", 1710.  Search for community: Tatlers and Scriblerians.  Break with the Whigs.  Swift breaks with Steele and Addison.  The Scriblerus club.  Swift's friends: Gay and Arbuthnot.  The Uses of Exile.  Home thoughts from Ireland (1710-1737).  Ireland's claim.  "A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture", 1720.  "The Draiper's Letters", 1724, and Lord Lieutenant Carteret.  "Gulliver's Travels", 1726
Bolingbroke as a formative influence.  Pope and the elucidation of "Gulliver's Travels".  Philosophy versus satire
The published correspondence with Pope.  "A Modest Proposal", 1729.  4. Women and the Body.  Swift's relationships with women.  Domination and friendship.  Pains of friendship.  Female friends.  The bounds of decency
Female schooling.  Sexual intimacy.  Poems to Stella.  "To Stella, Visiting me in my Sickness", 1720?.  "To Stella, Who Collected and Transcribed his Poems", 1720?.  Vanessa at arm's length.  The question of morbidity and scatological coarseness.  The morbid poems.  "Death and Daphne".  "A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed"
The scatological poems.  "The Lady's Dressing room", 1732.  "Stephon and Chloe", 1731.  "Mary the Cook-Maid's Letter to Dr Sheridan", 1718.  5. Swift and Contemporary Ideas.  The Royal Society.  Travelogues and 'my cousin Dampier'.  Locke: society and contract.  Science and language.  Locke: empirical philosophy.  Language in "Gulliver's Travels".  Imagination in "Gullivers's Travels".  The progress of the fable.  Part 2: Critical Survey. 
6. Critical Survey of Selected Passages.  Poetry.  Extract from "Baucis and Philemon", 1709.  Extract from "The Author Upon Himself", 1714.  Extract from "On Poetry: A Rhapsody", 1733.  Prose.  "A Tale of a Tub", 1704
"Gulliver's Travels", 1726.  Book I extract.  Book II extract.  Book III extract.  Book IV extract.  "A Modest Proposal", 1729.  Part 3: Reference Section  7. Biographical Notes.  Gazeteer.  Commentary on Illustrations
Bibliography.  Index

O autorze

Keith Crook