Jonathan Swift: A Literary Life

182 Pages·1991·17.794 MB·English

by  Joseph McMinn (auth.)

JONATHAN SWIFT
Macmillan Literary Lives
General Editor: Richard Dutton, Reader in English,
University of Lancaster
This series offers stimulating accounts of the literary careers of the
most widely read British and Irish authors. Volumes follow the
outline of writers' working lives, not in the spirit of traditional
biography, but aiming to trace the professional, publishing and
social contexts which shaped their writing. The role and status of
'the author' as the creator of literary texts is a vexed issue in current
critical theory, where a variety of social, linguistic and psycho
logical approaches have challenged the old concentration on
writers as specially gifted individuals. Yet repvrts of the 'death of
the author' in literary studies are (as Mark Twain said of a
premature obituary) an exaggeration. This series aims to demons
trate how an understanding of writers' careers can promote, for
students and general readers alike, a more informed historical
reading of their works.
Published titles
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Richard Dutton
JONATHAN SWIFf Joseph McMinn
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Michael O'Neill
JOHN DONNE George Parfitt
ALEXANDER POPE Felicity Rosslyn
JOSEPH CONRAD Cedric Watts
CHARLOTfE AND EMILY BRONTE Tom Winnifrith and Edward Chitham
D. H. LAWRENCE John Worthen
Forthcoming titles
JAMES JOYCE Morris Beja
JOHN MILTON Cedric Brown
GEORGE ORWELL Peter Davison
JANE AUSTEN Jan Fergus
THOMAS HARDY James Gibson
HENRY JAMES Kenneth Graham
JOHN DRYDEN Paul Hammond
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Keith Hanley
BEN JONSON David Kay
W. B. YEATS Alastair MacRae
GEORGE ELIOT Kerry McSweeney
VIRGINIA WOOLF John Mepham
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON Leonee Ormond
JOHN KEATS David B. Pirie
T. S. ELIOT A. E. Sharpe
GEOFFREY CHAUCER Barry Windeatt
EDMUND SPENSER Gary Waller
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Jonathan Swift
A Literary Life
Joseph McMinn
Ledurer, Department of English
University of Ulster at Jordanstoum
M
MACMILLAN
©JosephMcMinn 1991
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First published 1991
Published by
MACMILLAN ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
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Companies and representatives
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
McMinn, Joseph
Jonathan Swift. - (Macmillan literary lives).
1. English literature. Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745
I. Title
828.509
ISBN 978-0-333-48585-9 ISBN 978-1-349-21253-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21253-8
For Edna
Contents
Preface, with Suggestions for Further Reading ix
1 Secretary and Apprentice 1
2 'Pox on the Dissenters and Independents!' 21
3 A Pact with Power 38
4 A Deceptive Retirement 80
5 Literary Triumph in Ireland and England 106
6 Thave stretched out my Hand, and no Man regarded' 130
7 A Poetic Valediction 146
Notes 156
Index 168
vii
Preface, with Suggestions
for Further Reading
The guiding emphasis of the following narrative is that of a career
and a life devoted to writing. This excludes textual interpretation
and comprehensive biographical detail whenever such factors do
not bear on Swift's practice as poet, pamphleteer and correspon
dent. Steering between literary criticism and a biographical history,
I have tried to present an account of Swift's formation and
development as a writer. Occasionally, such a pure course is
impossible, given the historical character of Swift's status as a
writer. For example, since politics and friendship play such a
central role in his literary career, some contextual information is
necessary if the coherence of the narrative is to be sustained.
A literary life, therefore, tries to give imaginative attention to the
practice and process of writing. One of the constant tensions in
Swift's career is that between his self-image as a principled
amateur and the emergent commercialisation of his trade. Printers
and publishers are crucial to that career. Swift's ambivalent resist
ance to the literary market-place is partly reflected by a love of
anonymity and pseudonymity (he hardly ever signed his name to
anything he wrote) and by the large number of writings he
withheld from publication. Also, his duty and outlook as a clergy
man should never be ignored or underestimated in trying to
appreciate the zeal and consistency of his public writings: the
material welfare of his Church provided one of his favourite
literary pulpits. Yet he rarely wrote well when defending his own
views: the most testing contradiction in his writings is that
between the radical style of his assault on others and the uncompli
cated conservatism of his personal values. Swift discriminated very
emphatically between different kinds of writing and audiences,
especially between public and private work, or 'literary' and
'necessary' publications. In studying his career, we must enlarge
our understanding of the very term 'literature'.
Anyone writing about Swift's career has no excuse for being
poorly armed. The canon of his writings is a magisterial achieve
ment. This consists of The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, edited by
H. Davis, 14 vols (Oxford, 1939-{)8); H. Williams' edition of The
ix
x Preface and Further Reading
Journal to Stella, 2 vols (Oxford, 1948), which has been added to
Davis as Vols XV and XVI, and completes the set; The Poems of
Jonathan Swift, edited by H. Williams, 3 vols, 2nd edn rev. (Oxford,
1958) (a handier and, in many details, more up-to-date text is
Jonathan Swift: The Complete Poems, edited by Pat Rogers (London,
1983»; The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, edited by H. Williams, 5
vols (Oxford, 1963-5), (Vols IV and V now partially revised by
D. Woolley, 1972). In my notes, these three editions are abbrevi
ated as PW, Poems, and Corr. An authoritative, fully annotated
selection of Swift's main writings may be read, conveniently, in
Jonathan Swift, The Oxford Authors Series, edited by Angus Ross
and David Woolley (Oxford, 1984).
For comprehensive information on editions of Swift, see
H. Teerink, A Bibliography of the Writings of Jonathan Swift (1937, 2nd
edn rev., A. H. Scouten, Philadelphia, 1963). The most up-to-date
review of Swift scholarship is Swift Studies - 1965-1980: An
Annotated Bibliography, by R. Rodino (New York, 1984). There is
now a Supplemental Bibliography of Swift Studies 1965-1980, by
R. Rodino, H. Real and H. Vienken, published in Swift Studies, 1987,
Universitat Miinster. Such journals are the best source for keeping
abreast of Swift scholarship and of pursuing specialist interests in
this large field. Three other valuable journals deserve note: Eight
eenth-Century Ireland, Eighteenth-Century Studies, and The Scrible
rians.
My own narrative would have been impossible without the
resources and arguments opened up by other critics and biog
raphers. Foremost amongst these, inevitably, is Irvin Ehrenpreis,
whose Swift: The Man, His Works, and The Age, 3 vols (London,
1962-83), displays an eloquent synthesis of all scholarly skills.
Shorter, more specialised biographies worth consultation are
J. Downie, Jonathan Swift: Political Writer (London, 1984), and
D. Nokes, Jonathan Swift: A Hypocrite Reversed (Oxford, 1985). An
excellent book, the only full-length one of its kind, is O. Ferguson,
Jonathan Swift and Ireland (Urbana, Ill., 1962). The standard historical
work on Swift as clergyman is 1. Landa, Swift and the Church of
Ireland (Oxford, 1954). A superb interdisciplinary study which
applies contemporary literary theory with precision and power, is
C. Fabricant's Swift's Landscape (Baltimore and London, 1982).
I would like to thank Andrew Carpenter for initial inspiration;
Richard Dutton, my editor, for efficient and regular advice; Her
mann Real, for inviting me to speak on the subject at Munster;
Preface and Further Reading xi
Ronnie Bailie, for having read the draft-text with his usual scrupu
lousness; and Janet Campbell, a typist to beat them all. My wife has
endured all this, with understanding and humour, longer than
anyone: such friendship helped finish the work, and I thank her
above all.
J. MCMINN