Assignment- Paper No: 102
Name: Asha Rathod
Paper 102: Literature of the Neo-classical Period
Subject Code: 22393
Topic Name: Johnathan Swift Life and Work
Batch: M.A. Sem-1 (2023-25)
Roll No: 3
Enrollment No: 5108230038
Email Address: asharathod1451@gmail.com
Submitted to: Smt. S. B. Gardi, Department of English, MKBu
JONATHAN SWIFT
“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
-Jonathan Swift
BORN: 30 November 1667, Dublin, Ireland
DIED: 19 October 1745, Dublin, Ireland
Background Information
Jonathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland. His father died seven months before he was born leaving the Swift family in a difficult financial situation. At the age of four Swift’s mother sent him to live with his wealthy uncle, Godwin. Swift became a well educated man, studying at the Kilkenny Grammar School from 1674-1682. He then went on to study at Trinity College in Dublin from 1682-1689 where he received B.A. and M.A. degrees. In 1688, Swift moved to England and stayed with Sir William Temple at Moor Park where he was welcomed into the Temple household due to his mother’s relation to Lady Temple. During his stay at Moor Park, Swift taught a girl named Esther Johnson (Stella). This job turned out to be a landmark in Swift’s life. Swift returned to Ireland in 1699 after the Death of William Temple. Swift’s residence in Ireland did not stop him from making occasional trips to London, gaining fame from his essays. Stella eventually grew up and moved to Ireland in order to live closer to Swift. She also accompanied Swift on every one of his trips to London. Many believe that Stella and Swift were married in 1716. Unfortunately, Stella passed away in 1728 which had an impact on Swift for the rest of his life.
From 1707-1709 Swift was an Emissary in London for the Irish clergy. Swift attempted to begin a political career among Whigs in 1710. While this did not work out, Swift changed political parties(the Tories) and began to take over a journal called The Examiner. Soon, the Tories lost political power and this forced Swift to leave the news journal. After his political endeavors, Swift became the dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral from 1713-1742. During this time, many believe that Swift began to suffer from a form of Alzheimer’s disease. Swift had also been struggling with deafness since he was 20. On October 19, 1745 Swift died in Ireland.
He was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".
Swift is remembered for works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729). He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier—or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
His deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire being subsequently termed "Swiftian".
Early life:
Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland, on November 30, 1667. The son of an English lawyer, he grew up there in the care of his uncle before attending Trinity College at the age of fourteen, where he stayed for seven years, graduating in 1688. In that year, he became the secretary for Sir William Temple, an English politician and member of the Whig party. In 1694, he took religious orders in the Church of Ireland and then spent a year as a country parson. He then spent further time in the service of Temple before returning to Ireland to become the chaplain of the Earl of Berkeley. 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. He also wrote a number of political pamphlets in favor of the Whig party. In 1709 he went to London to campaign for the Irish church but was unsuccessful. After some conflicts with the Whig party, mostly because of Swift’s strong allegiance to the church, he became a member of the more conservative Tory party in 1710.
Unfortunately for Swift, the Tory government fell out of power in 1714 and Swift, despite his fame for his writings, fell out of favor. Swift, who had been hoping to be assigned a position in the Church of England, instead returned to Dublin. During his brief time in England, Swift had become friends with writers such as Alexander Pope, and during a meeting of their literary club, the Martinis Scribblers Club, they decided to write satires of modern learning. The “third voyage” described in his best-known work, Gulliver’s Travels, is assembled from the work Swift did during this time. However, the final work was not completed until 1726, and the narrative of the third voyage was actually the last one completed. After his return to Ireland, Swift became a staunch supporter of the Irish against English attempts to weaken their economy and political power, writing pamphlets such as the satirical A Modest Proposal, in which he suggests that the Irish problems of famine and overpopulation could be easily solved by having the babies of poor Irish subjects sold as delicacies to feed the rich.
Swift's Ireland was a country that had been effectively controlled by England for nearly 500 years. The Stuarts had established a Protestant governing aristocracy amidst the country's relatively poor Catholic population. Denied union with England in 1707 (when Scotland was granted it), Ireland continued to suffer under English trade restrictions and found the authority of its own Parliament in Dublin severely limited. Swift, though born a member of Ireland's colonial ruling class, came to be known as one of the greatest of Irish patriots. He, however, considered himself more English than Irish, and his loyalty to Ireland was often ambivalent in spite of his staunch support for certain Irish causes. The complicated nature of his own relationship with England may have left him particularly sympathetic to the injustices and exploitation Ireland suffered at the hands of its more powerful neighbor.
Although Swift's disgust with the state of the nation continued to increase, A Modest Proposal was the last of his essays about Ireland. Swift wrote mostly poetry in the later years of his life, and he died in 1745.
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”
-Jonathan Swift
A MODERN PROPOSAL AND OTHER SATIRE
Early Years and Education
Jonathan Swift was born into a poor family that included his mother (Abigail) and his sister (Jane). His father, a noted clergyman in England, had died seven months before Jonathan's birth. There is not much known of Swift's childhood, and what is reported is not always agreed upon by biographers. What is accepted, however, is that Jonathan's mother, after the death of her husband, left the children to be raised by relatives (probably uncles), while she returned to her family in England (Leicester). It is also reported that Swift, as a baby, was taken by a nurse to England where he remained for three years before being returned to his family. This is open to conjecture, but the story contributes to the lack of information available regarding Swift's childhood.
Beginning in 1673, Swift attended Kilkenny Grammar School, where he enjoyed reading and literature and excelled especially in language study. In 1682, Swift entered Trinity College where he received a B.A. by "special grace," a designation for students who did not perform very well while there. Upon leaving Trinity College, Swift went to England to work as a secretary (a patronage position) for Sir William Temple. In 1692, Swift received an M.A. from Oxford; in 1702, he received a D.D. (Doctor of Divinity) from Dublin University.
Swift's Career
From approximately 1689 to 1694, Swift was employed as a secretary to Sir William Temple in Moor Park, Surrey, England. In 1694, he was ordained as a priest in the Church of Ireland (Anglican Church) and assigned as Vicar (parish priest) of Kilroot, a church near Belfast (in Northern Ireland). In 1696, he returned to working with Sir William Temple, and in 1699, after the death of Sir William, he became chaplain to Lord Berkley.
In 1700, Swift became the Vicar of Laracor, Ireland, and he was also appointed pretend (an honorary clergyman serving in a cathedral) at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. In 1707, Swift was appointed as an emissary to the Church of Ireland, and in 1713, he was appointed as Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Throughout all this time, and, indeed, after his appointment as Dean of St. Patrick's, Swift continued writing satirically in various genres, including both prose and poetry, using various forms to address different causes, including personal, behavioral, philosophical, political, religious, civic, and others.
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