Jonathan Swift and the Burden of the Future"Alan Chalmers's Jonathan Swift and the Burden of the Future explores Swift's temporal apprehension in the context of the pertinent seventeenth- and eighteenth-century religious, scientific, and cultural debates. It also compares Swift's imaginative understanding of time with that of such other writers as Juvenal, Rabelais, Milton, Pope, Gray, and Whitman."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
Contents
| 15 | |
| 17 | |
| 29 | |
The Refuse of Time What Posterity Meant to Swift | 40 |
A Tale of a Tub | 45 |
Swift and the Authorial Life Beyond Life | 51 |
Temporal Transgressions Satire and the Future | 59 |
Magic and Mortal Danger in the World of Satire | 64 |
Gulliver Going Home | 108 |
Narrative Progress and the Satiric List | 112 |
Gullivers Travels as Narrative and Antinarrative | 115 |
Gulliver Beyond His Travels | 124 |
Intimate Transcriptions SelfDissemination in the Poetry of Jonathan Swift | 130 |
To Stella Who Collected and Transcribed His Poems | 131 |
To Janus on New Years Day Written in the Year 1729 | 136 |
Verses on the Death of Dr Swift DSPD | 139 |
Two Case Studies | 68 |
The Future Made Flesh Swift and the Satiric Body | 78 |
Gullivers Body | 86 |
Gulliver and the Struldbruggs | 93 |
Immortality and the Authorial Body | 99 |
Future Bound Gulliver and the Text in His Hand | 103 |
Swift Gray and Whitman | 145 |
Afterword | 151 |
Notes | 152 |
Select Bibliography | 165 |
Index | 172 |
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Common terms and phrases
Alexander Pope ancient appears apprehension aspiration attack Bakhtin becomes bodily body Brobdingnag Cankered Muse century claims comic contemporary corruption Critical cultural David Nokes Death of Dr decay desire Dryden Dunciad edition ephemeral example expressed flesh future genre Glubbdubdrib Goodman's Gulliver Gulliver's Travels hack Hakewill Hipponax historical Houyhnhnmland Houyhnhnms Hugh Kenner human Ibid imagines immortal irony Janus John John Dryden Jonathan Swift Julia Kristeva Juvenal Juvenal's Kenner Kernan language later letter Lilliput literary literature London manifest ment Milton's moral narrative narrator nature notes observes Oxford Paradise Lost paradox physical poet political Pope Pope's posterity potential present pride Proposal Rabelais Rabelais's Rawson readers refers satire's satirist seems social sort Stella Struldbruggs Swift's Poetry Swift's satires Swift's sense Swift's view Swift's writings Swiftian Tale temporal textual tion Traugott travel literature turns University Press vanity Verses vision voice Whitman words Wyndham Lewis Yahoos
Popular passages
Page 57 - For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.
Page 144 - He gave the little wealth he had, To build a house for fools and mad: And showed by one satiric touch, No nation wanted it so much: That kingdom he hath left his debtor, I wish it soon may have a better.
Page 146 - One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill, Along the heath, and near his fav'rite tree ; Another came ; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he ; ' The next with dirges due in sad array Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne. Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.
Page 126 - I had not made bold to strike out innumerable Passages relating to the Winds and Tides, as well as to the Variations and Bearings in the several Voyages; together with the minute Descriptions of the Management of the Ship in Storms, in the Style of Sailors: Likewise the Account of the Longitudes and Latitudes; wherein I have Reason to apprehend that Mr.
Page 148 - Who was to know what should come home to me? Who knows but I am enjoying this? Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?
Page 92 - Disposition, perhaps a little more civilized, and qualified with the Gift of Speech; but making no other Use of Reason, than to improve and multiply those Vices, whereof their Brethren in this Country had only the Share that Nature allotted them. When I happened to behold the Reflection of my own Form in a Lake or Fountain, I turned away my Face in Horror and detestation of my self; and could better endure the Sight of a common Yahoo, than of my own Person.
Page 149 - Other states indicate themselves in their deputies . . . but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors . . . but always most in the common people.