Jonathan Swift (1667--1745)

Life Introduction Jonathan Swift, a posthumous child ( 遗腹子 ), was born

in Dublin, Ireland, of an English family, which had important connections but little wealth.

Through the generosity of an uncle, he was educated at Kilkenny Grammar School and then Trinity College in Dublin.

Between 1689 and 1699 he worked as a private secretary to a distant kinship Sir William Temple, a retired diplomat.

And there he also received a first-rate education in politics through contact with Temple and many other well-known politicians, learning much about the vice, hypocrisy, intrigues, deception and corruption in the political world.

Swift’s Literary Position and Works

Literary Position Swift is one of the greatest masters of English prose. Swift is a master satirist. Even today, he is still regarded

as a national hero in Ireland.

Works: A Tale of theTub (1704) Battle of the Books (written in 1679, published in 1704) Gulliver’s Travels (1726), his greatest satiric work

Swift’s Artistic Features

Satire His satire is usually masked by an outward gravity and

an apparent earnestness which renders his satire all the more powerful.

Simplicity and Directness Swift is always most unsurpassed in the writing style of

simple, direct, precise prose. He defined a good style as “proper words in proper places.” Clear, simple, concrete diction, uncomplicated sentence structure, economic and conciseness of language mark all his writings—essays, poems and novels.

Swift’s Concerns in his Works

Moral attributes Swift was a man of great moral integrity and social

charm. He had a deep hatred for all the rich oppressors and a deep sympathy for all the poor and oppressed.

Human nature His understanding of human nature is profound. In his

opinion, human nature is seriously and permanently flawed. To better human life, enlightenment is needed, but to redress it is very hard. He intends not to condemn but to reform and improve man nature and human institutions, there is often an under or overtone of helplessness and indignation.

Introduction to Gulliver’s Travels

Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan’s best fictional work, was published in 1726, under the title of Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Samuel Gulliver. The book contains four parts, each dealing with one particular voyage during which Gulliver meets with extraordinary adventures on some remote island after he has met with shipwreck of piracy of some other misfortune.

Part 1 The first part tells about his experience in Lilliput, where

the inhabitants are only six inches tall), twelve times smaller than the normal human beings. The emperor believed himself to be the delight and terror of the universe, but it appeared quite absurd to Gulliver who

was twelve times as tall as he. In his account of the two parties in the country, distinguished by the use of high and low heels, Swift satirizes the Tories and the Whigs in England.

Religious disputes were laughed at in an account of a problem which divided the Lilliputians: “ Should eggs be broken at the big end or the little end?”

Part 2

In the second part, Gulliver is left alone in Brobdingnag where people are not only ten times taller and larger than ordinary human beings, but also superior in wisdom. Gulliver now found himself a dwarf among men sixth feet in height. The king, who regarded Europe as if it were an anthill.

Part 3

The third part deals with mainly with his accidental visit to the flying Island, where the philosophers and projectors devote all their time and energy to the study of some absurd problems. Their scientists are engaged in projects for exacting sunbeams out of cucumbers, turning ice into gunpowder and making cloth from cobweb. It is a parody on scholastics and projectors.

Part 4 The last part is a most interesting account of his

discoveries in the Houyhnhnm land, where horses are endowed with reason and all good and admirable qualities, and are the governing class.

Contrary to the Houyhnhnms, the Yahoos （粗鲁之人） possess every conceivable evil. They are malicious, spiteful, envious, unclean and greedy. Gulliver admires the life and ways of the horses, as much as he is disgusted with the Yahoos, whose relations remind him of those existing in English society to such a degree that he shudders at the prospect of returning to his native.

《格列佛游记》内容欣赏分析 《格列佛游记》向来被当作世界儿童文学的经典，但当初斯威夫特创作这部小说的目的并不是为了儿童。作者自己说，他的创作目的“不是为了提供娱乐而是为了激怒这个世界。”也许是作品中的讽刺过于辛辣，这部小说的初版是匿名发表的。在这部小说中，斯威夫特通过丰富的想象，含沙射影地对英国的政治和社会大加撘伐，对人性的弱点进行无情的嘲讽。在慧马国中，马的理智与高贵和野胡的贪欲与鄙陋形成反差极大的对比，高下立判；再通过马的视角观察人类 --野胡的同类，或者说就是野胡 --使人性中的贪婪、堕落和无知等诸多缺点暴露无疑。斯威夫特的冷嘲热讽不可谓不辛辣尖刻，但文字上不温不火，绵里藏针，精彩之处令人拍案叫绝。

斯威夫特的语言具体明晰，简略中透出优雅；他曾把文字风格定义成“恰到好处的词语用在恰到好处的地方”，这也许是对他自己的语言风格的最好评注。《格列佛游记》中的故事是幻想性的、超现实的，但他暗中讽刺的现实即使在今天也并不鲜见，而且他的描写细致入微，给人以强烈的现实感。幻想和现实的统一使这部小说超越了时空限制，成为世界范围内老幼咸宜的不朽名篇。

Previewing Work for A Modest Proposal

Qs:

Do you know any backgrounds of this text? What is the narrator’s proposal? Do you think

that it is modest? How do you understand the subtitle?What tone

is used here?

Analysis of A Modest Proposal

Outline (4 parts) Part 1: Para1-7

(the present situation in Ireland expect a proposal to solve the problem of poor children beggars)

Part 2: Para 8-19

(detailing his proposal) Part 3: Para 20-28

(illustrating the advantages of his proposal) Part 4: Para 29-33

(supposing an objection to his proposal )

Part 1

What are the present situations in Ireland?

(Ireland falls in poverty and overpopulation. Poor female beggars with their children, people in Ireland lack of national loyalty, the English government is devouring Ireland)

What is Swift's attitude toward the beggars he describes in the opening paragraph?

Notice the narrator’s defense for his own proposal, and the statistical data. (his computation and economic mind)

Part 2

What is his proposal?

(Para 10. 120,000 children, among which 20,000 reserved for breed, only ¼ to be males; the remaining 100,000 be offered in sale)

the plump and fat children will be good for feeding and clothing

Appreciate Para 9,10,12,14,15

How to eat babies

A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

Why for English lords only

I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increases to 28 pounds.

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.

Part 3

The advantages of the proposal

a. it would greatly lessen the number of Papists

b. the poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own

c. the money gained from transaction will circulate in the country

d. their breeders will benefit from it directly

e. this food would bring great custom to taverns

f. this would be a great inducement to marriage

Part 4

Anticipating the objection of the proposal Para 33

What is the narrator’s attitude in saying that “I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny, the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past childbearing”?

With what social groups does he identify himself? （ the upper class, the new bourgeoisie, the poor people)

The speaker is a Protestant. While he professes sympathy for the plight of the poor Catholic population, he also holds a fairly contemptuous opinion of them. He takes great pains to enumerate the advantages of his proposed project for the wealthy, who would presumably be called upon to implement it.

Yet Swift's irony implicates this moneyed class for their monetary greed, their personal indulgence, their unflagging attention to their own self-interest, and their indifference to the state of the poor and the state of the nation as a whole.

An Overall Reviewing of the Text

The work is written in first person point of view; however, the narrator should not be confused with Swift himself, because the writer is merely a persona. He argues, through economic reasoning as well as a self-righteous moral stance, for a way to turn the problem of squalor among the Catholics in Ireland into its own solution.

His proposal is to fatten up the undernourished children and feed them to Ireland's rich land-owners. Children of the poor could be sold into a meat market at the age of one thus combating overpopulation and unemployment, sparing families the expense of child-rearing while providing them with a little extra income, improving the culinary experience of the wealthy, and contributing to the overall economic well-being of the nation.

He offers statistical support for his assertions and gives specific data about the number of children to be sold, their weight and price, and the projected consumption patterns.

He suggests some recipes for preparing this delicious new meat, and he feels sure that innovative cooks will be quick to generate more.

He also anticipates that the practice of selling and eating children will have positive effects on family morality: husbands will treat their wives with more respect, and parents will value their children in ways hitherto unknown.

His conclusion is that the implementation of this project will do more to solve Ireland's complex social, political, and economic problems than any other measure that has been proposed.

Theme

a model satire the most devastating protest against the

inhuman exploitation and oppression of the Irish people by the English ruling class

the apparent eagerness, sincerity and detachment of the author adds to the bitter irony and biting sarcasm

Comments on Jonathan Swift

Swift is one of the realist writers. His realism is quite different from Defoe's. Defoe's stories are based upon the reality of human life, while Swift's come from imagination.

His satire is marked by outward gravity and an apparent earnestness. This makes his satire all the more powerful.

He not only criticizes the evils of the English bourgeoisie but those of other bourgeois countries.

Swift is one of the greatest masters of English prose. His language is simple, clear and vigorous. He said, "proper words in proper place, makes the true definition of a style".

Swift expresses democratic ideas in his works.