Impact Of Sprats Work On The Literary Style Of Jonathan Swift - Book Report/Review Example

Impact Of Sprat’s Work On The Literary Style Of Jonathan Swift There are certain people and incidents which affect the behaviors, perceptions, thoughts and attitudes of individuals. These individuals then try to follow those influential figures in particular fields. The footsteps of the leading figures in different fields provide a deep reflection of the original works and style of those influential figures. The leading personalities and the extraordinary skills that prevail in their work influence the newer participants in the field. The reflection of those attitudes, behaviors and skills are found in the works of their juniors or co-workers. In the field of literature, there are many writers who have changed the course of English literature throughout the history. William Shakespeare, Spenser and Swift are some of those personalities to which English literature owes a lot. This paper aims to analyze the influence of Sprat’s work and literary style on the works of Jonathan Swift. Both writers are of great importance in the history of English literature. This paper also provides some examples from Swift’s Gulliver’s travel to prove its claims (Swift 1955). Jonathan Swift is a well-known satirist. His writing style is not limited to a single writing technique but involves the literary elements which are highly regarded in the literature world. For the understanding of Swift’s satirical work, Gulliver’s travel is an excellent example. Gulliver’s Travel is a great satirical work in the form of a travel book. Swift’s purpose, in writing this book was to hammer mankind for its absurdities, follies, and evil ways. He remains one of the bitterest satirists of mankind. A satire may roughly and deeply be defined as a humorous, witty exposure. A satire is a means by which the author can expose the reality of individuals, communities or all mankind by employing irony, mockery, ridicule, sarcasm and even invective as the weapons of attack. Swift, as such, shows himself as an adept in the art of wielding all these weapons: he is, indeed, a versatile satirist though his principle weapons are irony (including double irony) and invective. He is a master of not only what is called corrosive satire but also of comic satires. While comic satire is amusing and makes us laugh, corrosive satire is serious and scornful and does hardly provide any mirth. Gulliver’s travel contains both these kinds of satires, and shows the use of all the devices by a satirist. All satires aim at reform; in writing Gulliver’s travel, swift had aimed at amending and correcting his public though he was doubtful whether he would succeed in the “Letter from Captain Gulliver to his cousin Sympson”, Gulliver explores and deplores the fact that the account of his travels had brought about no change in the manners or behaviors, or mentality of the people around him and that things are very much the same as before the publication of the book. In his letter to his friend Alexander Pope, Swift had written that the chief purpose which had prompted him to write this book was “to vex the world rather than divert it”. What he meant was that the wanted to shock the people in to a realization of their faults and failings. In the same letter, Swift exposed the view that man was not a “rational animal” though he was certainly capable of making people realize their irrationality and to encourage them to develop their rational faculty and to be guided by it. In other words Swift had moral and ethical aims in his writings (Mills 1855 p202-210; Bredvold 1956). Gulliver’s travel is an allegorical satire. This means that Swift does not assail personalities and institutions directly but in a veiled manner; for instance, in the part I, the portrayal of Flimnap, the treasurer in Lilliput, is a satirical sketch of Sir Robert Walpole who was the Prime minister of England from 1715 to 1716 and then again from 1721 to 1742. Dancing on a rope, symbolizes, in the guise of the Treasure, Walpole’s skill ion parliamentary tactics and political intrigues. Similarly, Reldresal represents Lord Cantered who was appointed by Walpole to the office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Again, the phrase “one of the king’s cushions”, refers to one of the King’s mistresses who had helped Walpole to restore after his fall in 1717. The conflict between the high-heels and the low-heels symbolizes the conflicts between the big-endians and the little-endians, the two major political parties in the then England. The dispute between the big and the little endians symbolizes the quarrels between the Roman Catholics and Protestants. The reaction of the empress of Lilliput to Gulliver’s putting out the fire in her apartment is a satirical way of describing Queen Anne’s annoyance with Swift for having written ’a tale of a tub’ in which Swift had attacked the religious abuses but which had been misinterpreted by the Queen as an attack on the religion itself. The pigmies of Lilliput and the giants of Borbdingnag symbolize human beings, first reduced to a small scale, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope and then enlarged to a huge scale as if seen through a magnifying glass. In part IV, Swift gives us animal symbolism: the Yahoos represent human beings with all their good qualities completely left out, while the Houyhnhnms represent human beings with their good traits carried to perfection and their bad qualities completely eliminated. The accounts of Gulliver are first and second voyages- the voyage to Lilliput and Borbdingnag- contains abundant comic satire. In part II and III we find great examples of the comic satire. Sometimes, we witness animals and insects of huge sizes and sometimes on the projects like extracting sunbeams put of cucumbers and so on. On the other hand, Part IV contains serious, somber and grim satirical references. In this part we find, corrosive, fierce and offensive satire. The evil side of the human nature has greatly been exaggerated in the portrayal of Yahoos (Bredvold 1956; Swift 1955). Jonathan Swift and Thomas Sprat were somehow connected and many styles used by Swift are the ones that Sprat used. The way Swift wrote Gulliver's travels is an example of how Sprat also wrote. Swift wrote the book to provide the society a platform through which they could learn about the reality of life. Sprat on the other hand served as a literary scholar who wrote proses in accordance to the reality of life. Sprat and Swift were both well known for their contributions in a prose type of writing. Gulliver’s Travel was a prose style of writing which is followed by Swift. On the other hand Sprat also wrote the basis of prose in his book famous as The History of the Royal Society of London for the improving of Natural Knowledge. It can be clearly seen that both the authors shared a common view about prose and somehow Swift was copying the idea of Sprat of prose. "First, The Man-Mountain shall not depart from our dominions, without our license under our great seal”. This quote is written in Gulliver’s travel by Jonathan Swift and this can be compared to the way of writing did by Thomas Sprat on a poem for Abraham Cowley. “He was weary of the vexations and formalities of an active condition”. Dr Johnson referred to Thomas Sprat as “an author whose pregnancy of imagination and eloquence of language have deservedly set him high in the ranks of literature”. It can be clearly derived from this situation that Sprat had an extraordinary power of imagination through which he could write books and poems. This is exactly what Swift used in his books of Gulliver’s Travels. The incidents highlighted above about the animals and fictitious world were done with the help of his power of imagination. Both the writers wrote travel books and played an important role in the history of literature. Both had an interest in the politics and thus both took a lot from the topic of politics. Gulliver’s travels as mentioned above is greatly targeted by the politics in UK at that time whereas Sprat actively participated in the building up of the Royal Society. Both the writers had the aim of presenting the reality of the society in a style which was acceptable to the whole world (Mills 1851 pg 200-205; Swift 1955). It can be concluded that Swift took a great deal of inspiration from the works of Thomas Sprat. As highlighted above the works of Swift was inspired through the political events in UK at that time and the works of Sprat were somewhat the same too. Sprat focused on the political faults of the society which existed in his era and this was also done by Swift in his book (Mills 1851 p 200-205). Bibliography Top of Form Swift, J. (1955). Swift: Gulliver's travel. Chicago: The Great Books Foundation. Top of Form Mills, A. (1851). The Literature and the literary Men of Great Britain and Ireland: In two volumes. New York: Harper. Top of Form In Bredvold, L. I. (1956). Eighteenth century poetry & prose. New York: Ronald Press Co. Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Read More