Literary Tricks by Jonathan Swift - Essay Example

The Case of Swift Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) uses satire to its optimum in his two seminal works, Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World, familiarly known as Gulliver’s Travels and A Tale of a Tub. There was a great output of satirical literature in eighteenth century England. In the hands of a person like Swift it became a potent weapon to attack not only people inimical to himself but to strike at the root of an ideology that was perceived by Swift, and others like him, to be injurious to the state of England. In his own works Swift could be painfully apt and therefore cruel. His satire has intensity and virulence which upset not only his intended targets but till today haunts critics who have at times simply ascribed it to Swift’s predisposition to misanthropy and depression. Though recent critical knowledge has moved away from this view, the perception of Swift as a misanthrope persists. Perhaps the vehemence of Swift’s satire can be attributed in part to the peculiar need felt by eighteenth century thinkers of the immense importance of their times. There is no other way to explain the huge output of satire in the eighteenth century. Daniel Defoe, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, John Dryden, Alexander Pope were some other eighteenth century writers who utilized satire in the various genres of literature. Certainly none troubled the eighteenth century conscience more than Swift himself who uses savage polemic to subdue what was anathema to him. It would be wise to take a look at eighteenth century English history to discover where Swift stood and the causes which drew his ire. The late seventeenth century had seen the vigorous emergence in print of ideas which, to put it simply, sought to foreground humanity without any reference to divinity or society. Foremost and most influential was John Locke who in his essay titled, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) attributed the formation of human knowledge to the influence of external stimuli and experience. He rejected the notion that humans were born with certain innate ideas such as those concerning God, time, substance etc. He famously compared the human mind at birth to a white sheet of paper, a tabula rasa, which depended on experience and sense memory to form knowledge. Science emerged as an exciting new discipline that increasingly became a specialisation, cut off from society. Isaac Newton had published his Principia in 1687. The eighteenth century is therefore also termed as “The Age of Reason” and the “Age of Enlightenment”. However this simple categorisation of an entire age misleads us to the amount of intense opposition against Reason. The problem was not with reason as such but with the use of reason to mislead, to divert and to misuse. Drawing the full force of Swifts satires were the “Moderns”. The “Moderns” for Swift represented a whole gamut of wrongs in eighteenth century society. Michael Seidel enumerates the number of things that Swift put himself against: experimental science, speculative philosophy, expanded credit-based economy, weapons technology and colonisation, but also modern ways of dispensing information – newspapers and journals, self-help literature, mass-culture entertainments, schemes for social improvement and memoir-based narratives. (235) A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels have been created out of Swifts need to set matters right in contemporary eighteenth century society. Indeed he along with Alexander Pope, John Gay, John Arbuthnot, Thomas Parnell and Robert Harley named themselves the Scriblerians to raise their voices against the degeneration in cultural productions which seemed to accompany a general degeneration in politics. Swifts targets of satire are many as previously stated. Tale of a Tub and Gullivers Travels mock at the prevalence of hacks and the vogue in travelogues and memoir writing. The narrator in A Tale of a Tub is an impoverished hack who pens his work in his garret. A Tale of a Tub was published anonymously in 1704 though evidence indicates that it was written between 1696 and 1699. A Tale of a Tub comprises three sections divided into the Tale, the Battle of the Books and the Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit. The immediate impetus for the Tale was the dispute between Swifts mentor, William Temple and William Wotton and Richard Bentley. The battle was between two rival forces in society, “ancients” and the “moderns”. The “ancients” among whom Swift placed himself believed in the importance of classical learning while the “moderns” gave precedence to modern scientific knowledge based on facts and reason. William Temple had published an essay Upon the Ancient and Modern Learning (1690). Temple in this essay had attacked the view that history symbolised “progressivism” along with the equally injurious belief that the modern age was superior to earlier ages (Quintana, 44). Unfortunately to support his argument about the superiority of ancient literature Temple had used Aesops Fables and the Epistles of Phalaris. Richard Bentley who was then the keeper of the Royal Library at St. Jamess Palace destroyed Temples evidence as spurious in his work, a Dissertation, which he published in a new edition of Wottons Reflections. Quintana says that Swift had no great interest in the theoretical nature of the debate but actively resented the behaviour of the “moderns” who he termed a group of “enthusiasts”. The term enthusiasm in the eighteenth century did not carry the positive connotations that are attributed to it today. Instead the term meant radicalism in political and social life. Enthusiasm connoted socially disruptive qualities such as fanaticism, superstition, unbounded zeal, atheism, bigotry and skepticism. For churchmen and philosophers of the time such as Benjamin Whichcote and Jeremy Taylor, an enthusiast was a person who was an inconvenience to society. Enthusiasm was seen as one of the major causes of socially disruptive events such as the English Civil War. In a time and society where the continuance of the church and state had come to be seen as necessary, beneficial and stabilising forces, religious enthusiasts especially, who frequently rejected the institution of the church as mediator between human and divine forces were seen as de-stabilising and harmful. The term was applied therefore freely in the eighteenth century to describe any radical dissenting sect whose tenets widely diverged from those of the Anglican Church. The opposition to enthusiasm, as it was then understood, ran deep. England had passed through tumultuous times that she was anxious to put behind her. There was a very real fear that enthusiasts or rather fanatics could plunge England back into the same chaos, upheaval and anarchy she had just extricated herself out of. It is pertinent to remember that radicalism or enthusiasm was also interpreted as insanity or lunacy in eighteenth century England. An important segment in the Tale is the chapter titled Digression Concerning The Original, The Use, And Improvement Of Madness In A Commonwealth. For Swift radicalism, dissent, enthusiasm and madness are all one and the same. Madness is the bastion of Jack who in the Tale represents the Dissenters. Madness however materialises in different aspects of life and Swift is quick in pointing it out. So madness is the reason for the mindless conquests and thoughtless decisions of monarchs. Madness again is the impetus behind “great introducers of new schemes in philosophy” (n.pag). Swift names ancient philosophers like Epicurus, Diogenes, Apollonius, Lucretius, Paracelsus and Descartes who shared the art of madness. For Swift their culpability lay in the fact that they tried to define man based on their own self. Thomas Duddy in History of Irish Thought points out that Swift uses thoroughly logical and reasonable arguments to prove that madness can be a conceivable source for the genius of creativity. A contemporary, says Swift in the Digression on Madness, who possesses this quality of madness is Mr. Wotton who by talent has the qualification to found a new religion all by himself. Swift makes multiple associations between madness and the “Moderns” whether they are in religion or literature. Swift comments: Lastly, whoever pleases to look into the fountains of enthusiasm, from whence in all ages have eternally proceeded such fattening streams, will find the spring-head to have been as troubled and muddy as the current. Of such great emolument is a tincture of this vapour, which the world calls madness, that without its help the world would not only be deprived of those two great blessings, conquests and systems, but even all mankind would unhappily be reduced to the same belief in things invisible. (n.pag) Swift mockingly posits madness as the reason behind all greatness and imagines it to be the result of redundant vapors in the body which rise upward and thereby affect the brain. At one point Swift the satirist takes over from the hack narrator to state that: For the brain in its natural position and state of serenity disposeth its owner to pass his life in the common forms, without any thought of subduing multitudes to his own power, his reasons, or his visions, and the more he shapes his understanding by the pattern of human learning, the less he is inclined to form parties after his particular notions, because that instructs him in his private infirmities, as well as in the stubborn ignorance of the people. But when a mans fancy gets astride on his reason, when imagination is at cuffs with the senses, and common understanding as well as common sense is kicked out of doors, the first proselyte he makes is himself; and when that is once compassed, the difficulty is not so great in bringing over others, a strong delusion always operating from without as vigorously as from within. (n.pag) For Swift the inmates of Bedlam are rich talent pools who share their talent with people such as Wotton. His target here is the growing pool of so-called professionals like Wotton and Bentley who are part of a larger trend towards specialisation of knowledge. Michael Seidel says that Swift laid the blame for what he saw as the “debasement of language” on the “pseudo professionalism of the modern age” (251). Gullivers Travels demonstrates clearly Swifts anger against the “moderns”. According to Carole Fabricant, the book parodies the travelogues of the time with its elaborate maps and detailed descriptions of the land and curiosities encountered in the journey. The hero Gulliver himself is a parody of the brave Protestant, capitalist, “empire building” hero of Defoes narratives (743). Defoe’s narratives emerged and functioned in a kind of economic system which Swift particularly reviled. Swift preferred the landed gentry as more stable for society though he, like other, had come to realise the importance of trade for England. What Swift disliked was the emerging fashion of stockjobbing which he saw as unstable and extremely insecure. It was the money generated from such enterprises that basically funded the nascent empire building instinct of England. In the third book of Gullivers Travels, Gulliver voyages to Laputa whose singular inhabitants remain immersed in weighty reflections that so incapacitate their normal functioning that they require servants to flap their ears before commencing a conversation. The King of the Laputans along with his court resides in a flying island. Here Gulliver meets a people who have stretched the possibilities of science beyond imagination. Mathematics and music is the compass of their interests. However in the practical usage of the above disciplines the Laputans remain inadequate. Gulliver visits the capital of Laputa, Balnibarbi, where he visits the Academy of Projectors. The Academy of Projectors is an obvious reference to the Royal Society founded in England in 1660. The Projectors invent hare-brained schemes that fail in practical application. Swift has made satirical use of much of the Royal Societys experiments. Sprat in his History of the Royal Society had proposed his ideal in prose as the delivering of a commensurate number of “Things” in an equal number of “Words”. Swift mocked this in his invention of a Projector whose bright idea is to eliminate words by having each person carry on his person a number of things to serve in its stead. The experiment by a Laputan Projector to extract sunbeams out of cucumbers is a sly reference to Stephen Haless work on respiration in plants and the effects of the sun on soil. The ideas become progressively sillier and finally Gulliver visits the Projectors who specialise in the dissection of political craft. To one Projector, Gulliver provides details of the craft and cunning he had witnessed in a place he had visited once: In the kingdom of Tribnia, by the natives called Langden, where I had long sojourned, the bulk of the people consisted wholly of discoverers, witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers, ….It is first agreed and settled among them what suspected persons shall be accused of a plot: then effectual care is taken to secure all their letters and other papers, and put the owners in chains. These papers are delivered to a set of artists very dexterous of finding out the mysterious meaning of words, syllables and letters. For instance they can decipher a close-stool to signify a Privy Council, a flock of geese a senate, a lame dog an invader.... (163). George Orwell in Politics vs. Literature points out that Tribnia is an anagram of Britain while Langdon is one letter away from becoming an anagram of England. For Orwell Swifts masterpiece ostensibly purports to be a satire on humanity but remains a “local application” (n. pag). For Orwell, oftentimes Swifts satire seems to be occasioned only by his disappointments in life. Orwell writes, “But the most essential thing in Swift is his inability to believe that life – ordinary life on the solid earth, and not some rationalized, deodorised version of it – could be made worth living”. Orwell seems to agree that Swift does possess a measure of misanthropy that makes him rant against humanity. This can easily be believed when readers follow Gulliver into his meetings with the ancient philosophers and modern blackguards in Glubbdubdrib whose natives are proficient in magic. At the favour of the Governor of Glubbdubdrib Swift meets ancient men of honour such as Homer and Aristotle as well as comparatively recent philosophers like Descartes and Gassendi. Swift makes Aristotle point out the loopholes in the philosophies enunciated by Descartes and Gassendi. Swifts Aristotle comments that the new systems of knowledge were simply new fashions which would appear in various forms but which also would not last. It is difficult to determine if the Swiftian wise prescriptions undercut the perception of misanthropy that follows him. One would not admonish if one had no hope for change. Certainly Swift becomes grimmer as he reveals Gullivers part horror and part fascination with the knavery and roguery that lies at the heart of modern man. Modern history reveals itself to Gulliver to be a series of gaffes and misdeeds that touch on the bestiality of men. In Luggnagg Gulliver witnesses the failed potential of human immortality. Gulliver, Swifts naïve narrator, goes into raptures envisioning the immense fruits of a long life. In the Struldbruggs Swift inverts Gullivers dream into a nightmare. Instead of greatness, the human immortals, the Struldbruggs, are considered a bad omen in Luggnaggian society. They become senile, rapacious, greedy and vile the longer they live. Even being immortal cannot correct the rotten core that lies at the heart of humanity, Swift seems to say. In the fourth book, Gulliver journeys to the land of the Houyhnhnms. There he finds the laws of nature inverted. Horses are the civilized race while the yahoos, a degenerate race of human-like beings are the brutes in this land. The land of the Houyhnhnms represents the utopia of reason. For the Houyhnhnms, reason is the sole motive to action. Living in perfect accord and harmony with each other they are not slave to irrational passions or the baser instincts which Gulliver comes to associate with his own race. The term for a lie in Houyhnhnm language is simply “the thing which is not”. Governed by reason like other Houyhnhnms, Gullivers master, the horse which seems to have adopted him, has trouble understanding the reason for the continued existence of a miserable creature like man. Gulliver recites a litany of the degenerate and corrupted aspects of man. Man, says Gulliver, makes war on man because of a difference of opinion or out of simple covetousness. A man becomes a Chief Minister of State in England not because of his abilities but through deceit, blackmail and a display of “furious zeal” in public affairs (214). Rot and decay has seeped into the marrow of human society. Ones property is never safe from greedy lawyers; ones health is never safe from the quacks in medicine. The rise of the culture of luxury in English society has reduced the poor and unfortunate to practice the arts of: “begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, forswearing, flattering, suborning, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libelling, free-thinking, and the like occupations:” (212) For Gullivers master the dilemma lies in the apparent irreconcilability between mans powers of reason and his unreasonable acts. The quality of reason, supposedly also found in humans, he conjectures, is not reason at all but a “distorted” version of reason. This distorted version of reason is what Swift, the satirist, lampoons. An unjustified stress on reason gives primacy to the individual self at the cost of others in society and is therefore injurious to the fabric of society. However the Houyhnhnms are not to be thought of as ideal too. They symbolise the dead and the static, being with no passion in life save that of equanimity to family and strangers alike. Some critics consider the whole of Gullivers Travels as a long exercise in madness. Gulliver returns home after his voyage to Houyhnhnm Land, a madman in many respects. He returns home a misanthrope, unable to bear the smell of humans. His preferred company becomes the horses in his stable. Gulliver returns to England shattered in his mind and senses unable to rehabilitate into human society. It is also pertinent that the net result of Gullivers voyages is nothing profitable to England. The countries he has visited seem impossible to colonise thus negating the worth of his travels. Orwell and others like him see in Swifts work the tensions of the age. This is evident yet though Swift may have despaired of mankind, his efforts at showing up the follies and foibles of his age, as he saw them, display not madness in Swift but perhaps a deep pessimism. Swift was a biased man, no doubt, but he did, as Orwell himself remarks, see deeper than any other into human nature. Works Cited Fabricant, Carole. “Eighteenth-century travel literature.” The Cambridge History of English Literature. Ed. John Richetti. New York: CUP, 2005. Humphrys, A.R. The Augustan World: Life and Letters in Eighteenth Century England. London: Methuen, 1954. Quintana, Ricardo. Swift: An Introduction. London: OUP, 1955. Seidel, Michael. “System’s satire: Swift.com.” The Cambridge History of English Literature. Ed. John Richetti. New York: CUP, 2005. Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. 1726. Ed. Louis Landa. New York: Bookland, 2002. ---. A Tale of a Tub. Gutenberg. 27 Nov. 2008. . Read More