October 30th was the 350th birthday of Jonathan Swift; writer, satirist, poet, and one of Trinity’s most illustrious alumni. Swift350 is being celebrated across Dublin this year. Author of works such as Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal and A Tale of a Tub, Swift looms large, not only in the Irish canon, but across world literature as a whole, as one of the Brobdingnagian giants of prose satire. When read today in a world that is largely becoming more and more critical of its literature, Swift may seem to some to be increasingly relevant, a prophetic and keen observer of humanity and critic of its propensity for violence. To others he is now inexcusably out of step. We asked three of Trinity’s leading experts on Swift to explain their relationship with the Dean and why they find something in his work that is still worth studying.
Dr. Aileen Douglas, Head of the School of English
I wish I could say that the first time I read Swift it had a transformative effect on my life, but I cannot really remember when I first read his works. I do have a powerful memory of reading Gulliver’s Travels when I was taking postgraduate courses at Princeton. People talk about the book as a satire on human pride and pretensions, and it is that, but what most impressed me at the time was how Swift’s account of Gulliver’s voyages to the land of the tiny Lilliputions (six inches tall) and the land of the Brobdingnagian giants (40 feet tall) made the human body appear so fragile, so vulnerable.
On his final voyage, Gulliver reaches the land of the rational horses, the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver is persuaded by them that he has more in common with the other inhabitants of the land: the bestial, inarticulate Yahoos, and, as a result, he becomes filled with self-loathing. He is distraught when he is expelled by the Houyhnhnms he so much admires, and, when he does get home to England, spends a lot of time in the stables, trying to talk to his horses.
Swift challenges his readers by making us uncomfortable, and asking us difficult questions about what it means to be human. Some critics call Swift a misanthrope, but I don’t see that myself. He is certainly, at times, a very angry writer. His most notorious piece, A Modest Proposal, purportedly offers a way to solve the problems of Irish poverty. It is the blackest example of black humour in the English language.
In his Latin epitaph, to be seen up in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Swift wrote of his ‘saeva Indignatio’: his savage anger. As I’ve read Swift over the years and come to know his writing better, it seems to me that his anger at human cruelty and destructiveness — the heat of which still rises off the page centuries after his death — is his greatest gift to us.
Dr. Amy Prendergast, Teaching Fellow in Eighteenth Century Writing in the School of English.
Those of us working in the world of the eighteenth century frequently encounter the awesome figure of Jonathan Swift. Swift’s influence pervades many aspects of our academic lives, featuring across reading lists and conference schedules. Perennially linked to the wonderful and captivating Gulliver’s Travels, it is as an eighteenth-century poet that Swift most informs my own research.
The stereotypical poet of the Augustan period being conceived of as witty, urbane, and above all sociable, Swift’s writings illustrate and help to construct such conventions. Many of Swift’s poems are populated by a wide cast of intriguing characters and feature a conversational quality, frequently remarked upon by students. Rather than exclusively composing and editing his works in isolation, Swift often joined with his fellow writers in gatherings that involved the circulation of verse for discussion and comment. Such collaborative productions have long fascinated me, with their emphasis on people coming together to share ideas.
Reading parties, literary salons, book clubs, and societies were widespread in Ireland of the eighteenth century, and Jonathan Swift was at the centre of many intellectual gatherings of the earlier decades. The writer was closely connected with Patrick Delany’s literary gatherings in Delville, for example, fondly remembered by Mary Granville, later Delany: “I recollect no entertainment with so much pleasure, as what I received from the company; it has made me very sincerely lament the many hours of my life that I have lost in insignificant conversation.”
Literary salons differed from many other forms of associational life in that they were open to both men and women. As well as attending mixed-gender gatherings, Swift was also at the centre of Laetitia Pilkington’s memoirs, and the writer’s relationships with women have drawn much comment and debate. His interactions with aspiring poets such as Mary Barber remind us again of the networks of literary sociability that existed in Dublin at this time, and of Swift’s role in promoting the works of such women writers, through both encouragement and subscription.
Swift’s engagement with different forms of sociability continue to fascinate and excite, and to inform the writings of those of us fortunate enough to spend our days alongside these figures. His biting satire, scatological poems, Irish pamphlets, and prose writings continue to excite debate and enthral readers. The conference held at Trinity to celebrate his 350th anniversary this summer echoed the emphasis placed on associational life within Swift’s own lifetime, drawing on the research of scholars from across the globe, who continue to celebrate Swift’s contributions to the literary landscape of the eighteenth century and of our own times.
Dr Jane Maxwell, Principal Curator at the Library of Trinity College, and curator of the online exhibition “Discovering the Dean: Jonathan Swift, Trinity College and Dublin City”
Jonathan Swift – why are we still talking about him?
Some historical figures become industries. Shakespeare is an obvious example. Jane Austen is another. Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett are simmering away nicely (I would put in an Irish woman’s name if could, believe me). Swift is not in those leagues which makes it difficult to understand why he is viewed with such fondness by individuals who will never read a word he wrote. What’s the big deal? It is all very well to say that Gulliver’s Travels has never been out of print since seventeen-twenty-whatever, but who is reading it apart from students of literature? It is mostly marketed for children now with all the politics, ladies’ bosoms, and lice left out.
Perhaps Swift’s reputation, in Ireland at least, rests on the mistaken idea that his Drapier’s fulminations against the English mismanagement of Irish affairs meant Swift was an Irish nationalist? “Were not the people of Ireland born as free as those of England” he thundered, to Irish delight. Newsflash – he meant the English in Ireland.
Admittedly he was the smartest man in any room he was in (he may also have predicted internet search engines, of which more anon), and he was great company. He was also pro-female education, always a good thing, you might say. Well, yes and no. There is all that weird pinching of his women friends and name calling and the whole did-he-didn’t-he-marry-Stella business to navigate if his reputation is approached from that angle. So why, oh why, do I admire him so much? Because I do.
Part of it has to be his moral courage. Swift was a deeply conservative man on most matters yet his hatred of injustice radicalised him, not only politically but socially. It was not a simple matter to dare to be different in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Early-modern society did not like change: the way things were was the way they should remain. One thing known to be true was that poverty was caused by the laziness and moral degeneracy of the poor. Any scant assistance the destitute were shown had as its aim greater social control rather than budding humanitarianism. Those who could work were put to work; those who couldn’t – foundling children and the sick – were removed to institutions where they could die like flies without clogging up the streets. What I admire most about Swift is not that he always found this reprehensible but that he came to find it so. Swift originally had no objection to the contemporary attitude to poverty but came to recognise and speak out about the untenable position of criticizing the poor for not working when there was no work available for them to do. He had the courage and independence of mind to change his opinion when the evidence demanded it. It not as simple as it sounds.
By the way, the prediction of search engines occurs in Gulliver’s Travels. Gulliver saw a computer, its surface covered with words on dice-sized pieces of wood. These were spun round, read and transcribed, by which means the ‘most ignorant’ people could write books ‘without the least assistance from genius or study’. Ouch.
Illustration by Katie Murnane.
