Swift

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Swifts A Modest Proposal

• ENGL 203
• Dr. Fike

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Reading Questions

• http//faculty.winthrop.edu/fikem/Courses/ENGL202
  03/2032018th20Century20Handout.htm
• Some of the information on the following slides
  is compressed from http//faculty.winthrop.edu/fi
  kem/Courses/ENGL20203/2032018th20C20(Koster).h
  tm

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The Neoclassical Period, a.k.a. The 18th Century

• The period spans 1660-1798 (the accession of
  Charles II to the publication by Wordsworth and
  Coleridge of Lyrical Ballads). 
• It is called the Neoclassical period because of
  reverence for the works of classical antiquity. 
• The period is often called the Age of Reason, and
  science was used to glorify God and his
  creation. 
• Be sure to get familiar with the terms
  Restoration (of the Stuarts to the monarchy) and
  Augustan Period (named after Emperor
  Augustusbecause of the emphasis on the
  classics). See Harmon and Holman for these
  terms.

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Major Events

• Earlier in the 17th century the Puritans had
  overthrown King Charles I in 1700 the Act of
  Settlement  prohibited a Catholic from being king
  or queen.
• Shift from kingdom to empire.
• Rise of the middle class.
• The Great Fire of London in 1666 enabled
  Londoners to remake their city.  
• And in 1662 the Royal Society was created to
  further scientific study.  We will see reason's
  role evaluated in Swift's works. Development of
  scientific instruments.

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Major Currents

• This was a period of political and military
  unrest, British naval supremacy, economic growth,
  the rise of the middle class, colonial expansion,
  the rise of literacy, the birth of the novel and
  periodicals, the invention of marketing, the rise
  of the Prime Minister, and social reforms. 
• Key names include Mary Wollstonecraft (a champion
  of the rights of women marriage was still an
  economic transaction women were still considered
  property) and John Wesley (the founder of
  Methodism). 
• Key words to describe the period include
  "façade," "complacency," and "decorum." 
  Appearances mattered.  Keep this in mind as we
  study The Rape of the Lock.

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Literary Developments

• Wit was a key concept as well (Harmon and Holman,
  pages 538-39), which is related to sprezzatura,
  the art of concealing art as well as humor.  HH
• Pope fancy and judgment
• Dryden propriety of thought and words
• Locke an agreeable and prompt assemblage of
  ideas, an ability to see comparisons
• Hume wit is what pleases
• Also, the notion of wit as a social grace that
  gives pleasure led to its comparison with humor
• HH It is for the most part agreed that wit is
  primarily intellectual, the perception of
  similarities in seemingly dissimilar thingsthe
  swift play and flash of mindand is expressed
  in skillful phraseology, plays on words,
  surprising contrasts, paradoxes, epigrams, and so
  forth, whereas humor implies a sympathetic
  recognition of human values and deals with the
  foibles and incongruities of human nature,
  good-naturedly exhibited.

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Further Literary Developments

• In this period people also emphasized studying
  the English language (grammar, the history of the
  language, dictionaries).  A key work  Samuel
  Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language. 
• Literature was didactic, self-examination was
  important (hence diaries and letters) as Pope
  says, "the proper study of mankind is man" (see
  Essay on Man, Epistle II, section I, line 2). 
• Satire was an important genre. 
• Other good terms to know  epistolary novel and
  heroic couplet.

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A Heroic Couplet

• O say what stranger cause, yet unexplored,
• Could make a gentle Belle reject a Lord?
• --Pope, Rape I.9-10
• A rhymed, usually end-stopped iambic pentameter
  couplet

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Types of Satire

• Horatian Satire in which the voice is
  indulgent, tolerant, amused, and witty. The
  speaker holds up to gentle ridicule the
  absurdities and follies of human beings, aiming
  at producing in the reader not the anger of a
  Juvenal but a wry smile.
• Juvenalian Formal satire in which the speaker
  attacks vice and error with contempt and
  indignation. It is so called because it is like
  the dignified satires of Juvenal. Samuel
  Johnsons The Vanity of Human Wishes is a
  well-known example. Juvenalian satire in its
  realism and its harshness is in strong contrast
  to Horatian satire, the other principal type of
  formal satire.

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Question

• What type of satire is Swifts A Modest
  Proposal?
• What type of satire is The Rape of the Lock?
• Gullivers Travels?

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Surface vs. Depth

• Key words to describe the period include
• "façade (saying one thing and doing another),
• "complacency (esp. related to comfort in assumed
  superiority)
• "decorum looking and acting right
  (self-control, self-governance, balance)
• POINT Appearances mattered. 
• Authors are critical of adhering to superficial
  truths.
• A Modest Proposal
• Gullivers Travels
• The Rape of the Lock
• For a development of this idea, see the next
  slide.

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Swifts A Tale of a Tub

• Swifts goal to satirize abuses in religion and
  learning. Re. learning, see 1752-53/206-07.
• Madness
• Imagination/fancy gt reason/memory
• Fiction gt truth
• Surface gt depth
• Credulity gt curiosity
• Embracing the things in the left position leads
  to being well deceived.
• And being well deceived happiness.

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Definition of Madness

• Extreme self-interest and self-deception
• Wish-fulfillment
• Alienation from reality
• Insistence on ones own opinions
• Superficiality of thought and inquiry

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Author vs. Persona

• The previous slide sums up what the Tubs PERSONA
  (HH Literally, a mask) is saying.
• Swift himself, of course, holds just the
  opposite
• Reason/memory gt Imagination/fancy
• Truth gt fiction
• Depth gt surface
• Curiosity gt Credulity
• Embracing the things in the left position leads
  to being well informed.
• And being well informed leads to happiness and
  virtue.
• Saying the opposite of what you mean is one of
  the characteristics of his satire.

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Reason Is Key.

• Definition the capacity for looking into the
  depth of things the reality principle

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Empiricism

• HH In philosophy the drawing of rules of
  practice not from theory but from experience.
  Hence, an empirical method is sometimes
  equivalent to an experimental method or
  scientific knowledge.

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Example of Embracing the Wrong Worldview

• Page 1754/208 Last week I saw a woman flayed,
  and you will hardly believe how much it altered
  her person for the worse.

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From A Modest Proposal

• 1769-70/223-24 Those who are more thrifty (as
  I must confess the times require) may flay the
  carcass the skin of which, artificially dressed,
  will make admirable gloves for ladies, and
  summer-boots for fine gentlemen (emphasis added).

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Example of the Right Worldview

• From Popes An Essay on Man IV.391-98
• That urgd by thee, I turnd the tuneful art
• From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart
• For Wits false mirror held up Natures light
• Showd erring Pride, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT
• That REASON, PASSION, answer one great aim
• That true SELF-LOVE and SOCIAL are the same
• That VIRTUE only makes our Bliss below
• And all our Knowledge is, OURSELVES TO KNOW.

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Digression

• Reader-response criticism 1751/205, first
  complete paragraph. Key term discourse
  communities or interpretive communities.
• HH This type of criticism suggests that a
  piece of writing scarcely exists except as a text
  designed to be read indeed, scarcely exists
  until somebody reads it music analogy. The
  reader-response approach does not so much analyze
  a readers responding apparatus as scrutinize
  those features of the text that shape and guide a
  readers reading.

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Summary

• Swift
• Surface vs. depth
• The role of reason
• Pope
• Surface vs. depth
• Decorum
• Swift Pope
• Juvenalian Swift
• Horatian Pope

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Decorum

• From The American Heritage Dictionary
• 1. Appropriateness of behavior or conduct
  propriety.
• The conventions of polite behavior.
• In art and literature, something that is proper
  to the harmony, essence, or unity of a
  composition or to a subject, locale, time, or
  character being treated. Cf. HH.

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More Summary

• Modest Role of reason
• GT Surface gt depth Rape
• Decorum (false
• values)

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Swift

• An Irish Anglican (i.e., Protestant but not the
  dissenting Protestants on 1771/225, note 13)
• A Tory (Whigs favored absentee landlords in
  Ireland, which devalued the economy)
• 1713 became Dean of St. Patricks Dublin

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Proposals

• Definition A straightforward argument for a
  particular policy.
• A popular genre in Swifts day
• Satire of the Royal Academy?

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Do This Now

• Please number the paragraphs of A Modest
  Proposal.
• Activity re. next slide 10-minute discussion
• Group 1 Start with Question 1
• Group 2 Start with Question 3
• Group 3 Start with Question 5
• Group 4 Start with Question 7
• Group 5 Start with Question 9

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Questions on A Modest Proposal

1. Who is the speaker of this "proposal"?  Is it
   Swift?  Or is it a character he invents?  What
   aspects of the speaker's character emerge?
2. To what audience does the proposal seem to be
   addressed?
3. To what "previous proposals" does the speaker
   refer?
4. What is the "modest proposal," exactly?
5. What advantages and disadvantages to the proposal
   emerge?
6. Near the end, what other proposals for solving
   the "Irish problem" does the speaker mention in
   passing? Are these sound?  Why have they been
   rejected?
7. Where does Swift seem, in this piece, to lay the
   blame for Ireland's current conditions?
8. What problem(s) is Swift criticizing?
9. How does this essay work as satire?

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From Swifts Short View of the State of Ireland
(1727)

• Ireland is the only Kingdom I ever heard or read
  of, either in ancient or modern Story, which was
  denied the Liberty of exporting their native
  Commodities and Manufactures.
• One third part of the Rents of Ireland, is spent
  in England. The Rise of our Rents is squeezed
  out of the very Blood, and Vitals, and Cloaths,
  and Swellings of the Tenants who live worse than
  English Beggars.
• POINT England did not allow economic
  competition in industry or trade. And absentee
  landlords lived in England they did not take
  care of their responsibilities in Ireland.

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From A Modest Proposal

• 1769/223 I grant this food will be somewhat
  dear, and therefore very proper for landlords,
  who, as they have already devoured most of the
  parents, seem to have the best title to the
  children.
• 1771/225 Secondly, the poorer tenants will
  have something valuable of their own, which by
  law may be made liable to distress, and help to
  pay their landlords rent their corn and cattle
  being already seized, and money a thing unknown.
• 1773/227 the oppression of landlords, the
  impossibility of paying rent without money or
  trade.

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Popular Aphorism in Swifts Day

• The gist of it A countrys riches were its
  people therefore, population should be
  maintained and increased.
• Swift perverts this axiom In Ireland, people
  can contribute only by dying.
• Even worse, the narrator insists that
  cannibalizing infants is both practical and
  humane.

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From Swifts Short View of the State of Ireland
(date 1727)

• Both sexes in Ireland, but especially the
  Women, despise and abhor to wear any of their own
  Manufactures, even those which are better made
  than in other countries.
• From MP 1771/225 And the money will
  circulate among ourselves, the goods being
  entirely of our own growth and manufacture.
• POINT Swift is criticizing the Irish for
  practices that they have the power but not the
  motivation to change. So he is attacking both
  the lousy conditions in Ireland and the attitudes
  of both the English and the Irish. See 1770/224,
  note 12 Swift had sought an Irish boycott of
  all such foreign luxuries of dress or diet.

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Use of False Authority

• 1769/223 a very knowing American
• 1770/224 the famous Psalmanazar
  http//www.museumofhoaxes.com/formosa.html

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Swifts Genuine Proposal

• 1772/226 Therefore let no man talk to me of
  other expedientstill he hath at least some
  glimpse of hope that there will ever be some
  hearty and sincere attempt to put them in
  practice.
• This page includes a list of things that Swift
  genuinely advocates.
• If personamadnessSwiftreason, then it makes
  sense that the persona would knock what Swift
  favors. END