Swift's politics : a study in disaffection / Ian Higgins.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Higgins, Ian, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; 20.

Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; 20

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745--Political and social views.

Swift, Jonathan.

Politics and literature--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Politics and literature.

Satire, English--History and criticism.

Satire, English.

Conservatives in literature.

Jacobites in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 232 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Modern scholarship has represented Jonathan Swift as both an Old Whig and a non-Jacobite Tory. Ian Higgins' contextual reassessment of Swift's political writing and recorded opinion considers the interpretative problems they present. It explores the consonance of Swift's political writing with militant Jacobite Tory writing on affairs of Church and State, and demonstrates Swift's dissimilarity from the Old Whig writers with whom modern criticism has misleadingly identified him. Swift's writings of the 1690s, during the last four years of Queen Anne's reign, and after the Hanoverian succession are shown to contain Jacobitical political implications when examined in their context in the 'paper wars' of the period. Higgins concentrates on the partisan meanings of the great satires A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels, and represents Swift (as he was read by his contemporaries) as a disaffected High Church Anglican extremist with Jacobite inclinations.

Contents:

1. Swift's political character

2. Revolution, reaction and literary representation: Swift's Jacobite Tory contexts

3. The politics of A Tale of a Tub

4. The politics of Gulliver's Travels.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-226) and index.

ISBN:

9780511548710

0511548710

9780511519048

0511519044

Publisher Number:

2027/heb07616 hdl