Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 - October 19, 1745) was a satirist, essay, Anglo-Irish political pamphlet (first for Whig, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick Cathedral, Dublin.
Swift is remembered for his works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), Rejected Anti-Christian Arguments (1712), Gulliver's Journey (1726 )), and Simple Proposals (1729). He is considered by EncyclopÃÆ'Â|dia Britannica the most famous satire in English, and less known for his poetry. He originally published all his works under pseudonyms - such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier - or anonymously. He is a master of two satirical styles, the style of Horatian and Juvenali.
His slow, ironic writing style, especially in Simple Proposals, has caused such satire to be called "Swiftian".
Video Jonathan Swift
Biography
Youth
Jonathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland. He is the second child and the only son of Jonathan Swift (1640-1667) and his wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick) from Frisby in Wreake. His father was a native of Goodrich, Herefordshire, but he accompanied his siblings to Ireland to seek their wealth in law after their real royal dad was destroyed during the British Civil War. Her maternal grandfather, James Ericke, was the vicar of Thornton, England. In 1634 the vicar was punished for Puritan practice. Some time later, Ericke and his family, including his young daughter, Abilgail, fled to Ireland.
Swift's father joins his older brother, Godwin, in legal practice in Ireland. He died in Dublin about seven months before his name was born. He died of syphilis, which he claims he got from a dirty sheet when out of town.
At the age of one year, Jonathan's son was taken by his wet nurse to his hometown of Whitehaven, England. He claims that there he learned to read the Bible. The nurse returned it to her mother, still in Ireland, when she was three years old.
Her mother returned to England after her birth, leaving her in the care of Uncle Godwin, a close friend and confidant of Sir John Temple whose son then employs Swift as his secretary.
The Swift family has some interesting literary connections. Her grandmother Elizabeth (Dryden) Swift is the nephew of Sir Erasmus Dryden, the grandfather of poet John Dryden. The same grandparent's aunt Katherine (Throckmorton) Dryden was Elizabeth's first cousin, wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. His great-grandmother, Margaret (Godwin) Swift is a sister of Francis Godwin, author of The Man in the Moone that influences the parts of Swift's Gulliver's Travels . His uncle Thomas Swift married a daughter of poet and playwright Sir William Davenant, William Shakespeare's godson.
The donor Swift and his uncle Godwin Swift (1628-1695) took primary responsibility for the young man, sending him with one of his cousins ​​to Kilkenny College (also attended by philosopher George Berkeley). He arrived there at the age of six, where he was expected to have learned about the basic slump in Latin. He has not and starts from the lower form. Swift graduated in 1682, when he was 15 years old.
He studied at Dublin University (Trinity College, Dublin) in 1682, funded by Godwin's son, Willoughby. The four-year course follows a curriculum largely established in the Middle Ages for the priesthood. Lectures were dominated by Aristotelian logic and philosophy. The basic skills taught by the students are debated and they are expected to argue both sides of each argument or topic. Swift is an above average student but not exceptional, and accepts B.A. in 1686 "by special grace."
Swift is studying for his master's degree when the political issues in Ireland surrounding the Great Revolution forced him to go to England in 1688, where his mother helped him gain the position of secretary and personal assistant Sir William Temple at Moor Park, Farnham. Temple is a British diplomat who arranged the Three Year Alliance of 1668. He has retired from public service to his country's land to care for his garden and write his memoirs. Gaining the trust of his employer, Swift "is often trusted with the things that are very important". Within three years of their acquaintance, Temple had introduced his secretary to William III and sent him to London to urge the King to approve a bill for a three-year parliament.
Swift took up his residence at Moor Park where he met Esther Johnson, then eight years old, the daughter of a poor widow who served as the sister of Lady Giffard's sister. Swift is his teacher and mentor, giving him the nickname "Stella", and both maintain a close but ambiguous relationship for Esther's remaining life.
In 1690, Swift left Temple for Ireland because of his health but returned to Moor Park the following year. The disease consists of vertigo fatigue or dizziness, now known as MÃÆ' Â © niÃÆ'¨re disease, and the disease continues to plague throughout his life. During this second visit with Temple, Swift received his M.A. from Hart Hall, Oxford in 1692. Then he left Moor Park, apparently desperate to get a better position through the protection of Temple, to become an ordained minister in an Established Church in Ireland. He was appointed to the prebend of Kilroot in Connor diocese in 1694, with a parish located in Kilroot, near Carrickfergus in County Antrim.
Swift seems miserable in his new position, isolated in a small, remote community far from the center of power and influence. While at Kilroot, however, he may have become romantically involved with Jane Waring, whom he calls "Varina", the brother of an old college friend. A letter from him survives, offering to stay if he is going to marry him and promise to leave and never return to Ireland if he refuses. He apparently refused, because Swift left his post and returned to England and Temple service in Moorish Park in 1696, and he remained there until the death of Temple. There he was employed to help prepare the records and correspondence of the Temple for publication. During this time, Swift wrote The Battle of the Books , a satire that responded to criticism of Temple's Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning (1690), though The Battle
Temple died on January 27, 1699. Swift, usually a harsh judge of human nature, says that all good and kindness to man has died with Temple. He stayed briefly in England to complete the editing of Temple's books, and perhaps in the hope that recognition of his work might have given him a suitable position in England. Unfortunately, his work made enemies among some of Temple's family and friends, especially the tough Temple sister, Lady Giffard, who objected to the carelessness imprinted on the memoir. Swift's next move is to approach King William directly, based on his imagination connection through Temple and the belief that he has been promised a position. It failed so sadly that he accepted the lower secretary and priesthood to the Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lords Justice of Ireland. However, when he reached Ireland, he discovered that the secretary had been given to another. He soon gained the life of Laracor, Agher, and Rathbeggan, and the Dunlavin prebend at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
Swift serves a congregation of about 15 in Laracor, which is just over four and a half miles (7.5 km) from Summerhill, County Meath, and twenty miles (32 km) from Dublin. He has enough free time to cultivate his garden, making canals after the Dutch Moor Park mode, planting willow trees, and rebuilding the pastor's house. As Lord Berkeley's pastor, he spends most of his time in Dublin and travels frequently to London for the next ten years. In 1701, he anonymously published a political pamphlet A Discourse on Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome .
Writer
Swift has a place to live in Trim, County Meath after 1700. He writes much of his work during this time period. In February 1702, Swift received his Doctor of Divinity from Trinity College, Dublin. That spring he went to England and then returned to Ireland in October, accompanied by Esther Johnson - now 20 - and his friend Rebecca Dingley, another member of William Temple's household. There is a great mystery and controversy over Swift's relationship with Esther Johnson, nicknamed "Stella". Many, especially his close friend Thomas Sheridan, believed they were secretly married in 1716; others, such as the Swift housekeeper, Mrs Brent and Rebecca Dingley (who lived with Stella for many years in Ireland) consider the story absurd. Swift certainly did not want him to marry someone else: in 1704, when their same friend William Tisdall told Swift that he intended to apply for Stella, Swift wrote to him to prevent him from the idea. Although the tone of the letter was polite, Swift personally expressed his disgust at Tisdall as an "interloper", and they felt strangers for years.
During his visit to England in recent years, Swift published the A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books (1704) and began to gain a reputation as a writer. This led to a close friendship, lifelong friendship with Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot, forming the core of Martinus Scriblerus Club (founded in 1713).
Swift has become more politically active in these years. From 1707 to 1709 and again in 1710, Swift was in London unsuccessfully urging the Whig Lord Godollin government, claiming Irish clerics to First-Fruits and Twentieths ("Queen Anne's Bounty"), which earns around £ 2,500. a year, already given to their brothers in England. He found the opposition to Tory's leadership more sympathetic to the cause, and, when they came to power in 1710, he was recruited to support their struggle as editor of The Examiner. In 1711, Swift published the political pamphlet of The Conduct of theies, attacking the Whig government for its inability to end a prolonged war with France. The Tory Government that came to the secret (and illegal) negotiations with France, which produced the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) ended the Spanish War of Succession.
Swift is part of the inner circle of the Tory government, and often acts as mediator between Henry St John (Viscount Bolingbroke), secretary of state for foreign affairs (1710-15), and Robert Harley (Earl of Oxford), treasurer lord and prime minister 1711-1714). Swift recorded his experiences and thoughts during this difficult period in a long series of letters to Esther Johnson, collected and published after his death as A Journal to Stella. The hostilities between the two Tory leaders ultimately led to the dismissal of Harley in 1714. With the death of Queen Anne and accession to George I that year, Whig returned to power, and the Tory leaders were tried for treason for secret negotiations with France.
Also during these years in London, Swift became acquainted with the Vanhomrigh family (Dutch trader who settled in Ireland, then moved to London) and became involved with one of the girls, Esther. Swift presents Esther with the nickname "Vanessa" (revealed by adding "Essa", Esther's pet form, to "Van" from her last name, Vanhomrigh), and she appears as one of the main characters in her poetry Cadenus and Vanessa . Their poetry and correspondence indicate that Esther is infatuated with Swift, and that she may have avenged her affection, only to regret this and then try to sever the relationship. Esther followed Swift to Ireland in 1714, and settled in her old family home, Celbridge Abbey. Their unfeasible relationship for several years; then there seems to be a confrontation, probably involving Esther Johnson. Esther Vanhomrigh died in 1723 at the age of 35, after destroying the will he made on the good of Swift. Another woman with whom she has a close but less intense relationship is Anne Long, a toast of Kit-Cat Club.
Maturity
Prior to the fall of the Tory government, Swift hoped his services would be rewarded with the designation of the church in England. However, Queen Anne does not seem to like Swift and thwart this effort. His dislike has been attributed to the A Tale of a Tub , which he thinks is blasphemous, compounded by The Windsor Prophecy , in which Swift, with his lack of surprising wisdom, suggests which Queen of the woman her bed she should and should not believe. The best position of his friends can be safe for him is Deanery of St. Patrick; this is not a gift from Queen and Anne, who could be a mortal enemy, explains that Swift will not accept the option if he can prevent it. With the Whig's return, Swift's best move is to leave England and he returns to Ireland with disappointment, virtual alienation, to live "like a rat in a hole".
Once in Ireland, however, Swift began to change his pamphleter skills to support Irish causes, producing some of his most impressive works: Proposals for Ireland's Industrial Universal Use (1720), Drapier Letter 1724), and A Simple Proposal (1729), earning him the status of an Irish patriot. This new role is not favored by the Government, which makes strange attempts to silence it. The printer, Edward Waters, was convicted of slanderous durian in 1720, but four years later, the grand jury refused to find that Drapier's Letter (which, though written under a pseudonym, universally known as Swift's work) is a lawless. Swift responded with an almost unchallenged attack on Irish justice in his ferocity, his main target being William Whitshed, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.
Also during these years, he began to write his work, Traveling to Some Remote Countries of the World, in the Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then the captain of several ships , better known as < i> Gulliver's Journey . Most of the material reflects his political experience in the previous decade. For example, an episode where a giant Gulliver puts the fire of the Liliput palace by urinating on it can be seen as a metaphor for the Tories' illegal peace treaty; doing good things in a way that is not profitable. In 1726 he paid a long-suspended visit to London, carrying with him the manuscript of Gulliver's Journey. During his visit, he stayed with his old friends Alexander Pope, John Arbuthnot and John Gay, who helped him arrange an anonymous publication of his book. First published in November 1726, it was a direct hit, with a total of three prints of that year and another in early 1727. French, German, and Dutch translations appeared in 1727, and copies of copies were printed in Ireland.
Swift returned to England once again in 1727 and stayed with Alexander Pope once again. The visit was cut short when Swift received word that Esther Johnson was dying, and hurried back home to be with him. On January 28, 1728, Esther Johnson died; Swift had prayed by his bedside, even arranging a prayer for his comfort. Swift could not bear to be present at the end, but on the night of his death he began writing his book The Death of Mrs. Johnson. He was too ill to attend a funeral at St. Patrick's. Years later, a bundle of hair, assumed to be Esther Johnson, was found on his desk, wrapped in a paper that read, "Only a woman's hair".
Death characterizes the life of Swift from this point. In 1731 he wrote the Drawing Verses of Death. Swift , the news of his own death was published in 1739. In 1732, his best friend and collaborator, John Gay died. In 1735, John Arbuthnot, another friend of his days in London, died. In 1738 Swift began to show signs of illness, and in 1742 he probably suffered a stroke, lost the ability to speak and realized his worst fears of being mentally disabled. ("I'm going to be like that tree," he once said, "I'm going to die upstairs.") He gets into a fight, and long-term friendships, like that with Thomas Sheridan, end up for no good reason. To protect him from unscrupulous hangers, who began to prey on the great man, his closest companions made him declare "unhealthy thoughts and memories". However, it has long been believed by many that Swift is actually crazy at the moment. In his book Literature and Western Man, author J. B. Priestley even quotes the last chapter of Gulliver's Travels as evidence of Swift's approach to madness. Bewley attributes his decline to 'terminal dementia'.
In section VIII of the series, The Story of Civilization , Will Durant explains the last years of Swift's life like that:
"The symptoms of insanity that must have appeared in 1738. In 1741, the guardian was appointed to take care of his affairs and oversee lest in a violent explosion which he had to do himself harm.In 1742, he suffered great pain from his left eye inflammation, which swelled to the size of an egg, five officers had to keep him from squinting his eyes, he went out all year without saying a word. "
In 1744, Alexander Pope died. Then on October 19, 1745, Swift, in nearly 80 years, died. Having been arranged in public for the Dublin people to pay their last respects, he was buried in his own cathedral by Esther Johnson, as he wished. Most of his fortune (£ 12,000) was left to set up a hospital for mental illness, originally known as St. Patrick's Hospital for Imbeciles, which opened in 1757, and which still exists as a mental hospital.
Epitaph
- (The text was extracted from the introduction to The Journal to Stella by George A. Aitken and from other sources).
Jonathan Swift wrote his own epitaph:
W. B. Yeats translated it poetically from Latin as:
- Swift has sailed to his retreat;
- Savage anger there
- Can not contaminate her breasts.
- Do it if you dare,
- Traveler-oppressed world; he
- Serve human freedom.
Maps Jonathan Swift
Work
Swift is a prolific writer, famous for his satire. The latest collection of his prose work (Herbert Davis, ed. Basil Blackwell, 1965-) consists of fourteen volumes. The latest edition of his complete poem (Pat Rodges, ed Penguin, 1983) is 953 pages. One correspondence edition (David Woolley, ed. P. Lang, 1999) fills three volumes.
The main prose works
Swift's first major prose work, A Tale of a Tub , shows many of the stylistic themes and techniques he will use in his next work. It is at once very funny and funny while pointing and very critical of its target. In its main thread, The Tale recounts the exploits of three sons, representing the main threads of Christianity, which received the inheritance of their fathers of their respective coats, with additional instructions not to make any changes. However, the children soon discover that their coats have fallen out of fashion today, and start looking for loopholes in their father's will that will let them make the necessary changes. When each finds his or her own way to get their father's advice, they struggle with each other for power and dominance. Put into this story, in chapters back and forth, the narrator includes a series of strange "deviations" on various subjects.
In 1690, Sir William Temple, the protector of Swift, published an Essay on Modern and Ancient Learning a classical writing defense (see Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns), holds the Epistles of Phalaris > as an example. William Wotton responded to the Temple with Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning (1694), indicating that Epistles is a later forgery. The response by supporters of The Ancients was later made by Charles Boyle (later Earl of Orrery and father of the first biographer Swift). A further answer on the Modern side comes from Richard Bentley, one of the leading clerics today, in his essay Dissertation on Epistles of Phalaris (1699). The last words on Swift's topic in his book Battle of the Books (1697, published 1704) in which he made a cute defense on behalf of Temple and the cause of Ancients.
In 1708, a cobbler named John Partridge published a popular almanac about astrological predictions. Because Partridge wrongly determines the deaths of several church officials, Swift attacked Partridge in Prediction for the Opening Year by Isaac Bickerstaff, a parody who predicted Partridge would die on 29 March. Swift followed up with a pamphlet issued on March 30 claiming that Partridge was actually dead, which is widely believed despite the contradictory Partridge statement. According to other sources, Richard Steele uses the Isaac Bickerstaff personae and is the person who writes about John Partridge's "death" and publishes it in The Spectator, not Jonathan Swift.
The Drapier's Letters (1724) is a series of pamphlets against the monopoly given by the British government to William Wood to print copper coins for Ireland. It is widely believed that Wood will need to flood Ireland with underrated coins for profit. In "letters" Swift serves as a shopkeeper - a cloth trader - to criticize the plan. Swift's writing is very effective in breaking down the opinion in the project that a gift is given by the government to anyone who reveals the true identity of the author. Though there is virtually no secret (when returning to Dublin after one of his trips to England, Swift was greeted with banners, "Welcome Home, Drapier") nothing has changed Swift, despite the unsuccessful attempt to prosecute Harding publishers. Thanks to the common denunciation of the coin, Wood's patents were sidelined in September 1725 and the coins were not circulated. In the "Verses of the Death of Dr. Swift" (1739) Swift remembers this as one of his best accomplishments.
Gulliver's Journey , most of which was written by Swift at Woodbrook House in County Laois, published in 1726. It was considered his masterpiece. Like his other writings, Travel is published under a pseudonym, Lemas Gulliver is fictitious, the ship's surgeon and then a sea captain. Some correspondence between Benj printers. Motte and Gulliver are also fictional cousins ​​who negotiate the publication of the book. Though often misjudged and published in a bowdlerised form as a children's book, it is a great and sophisticated satire of human nature based on Swift's experience of his day. Gulliver's journey is the anatomy of human nature, sharp eyes, often criticized for its politeness. He asks his readers to refute him, denying that he has adequately characterized the nature of man and society. Each of the four books - telling four journeys to most of the exotic lands of fiction - has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human dignity. Critics regard the work as a satirical reflection on the shortcomings of Enlightenment thought.
In 1729, Swift published a Simple Proposal to Prevent Children from the Poor in Ireland Being Burden on Their Parents or Their Country, and to Make Them Profitable for Publick , an allusion to the narrator, with deliberately making strange arguments, recommending that poor Irishmen escape their poverty by selling their children as food for the rich: "I have been convinced by a very well-informed American acquaintance in London, that a healthy young man who well cared for is at the age of one year... a very tasty and nutritious meal... "Following the satirical form, he introduces the reforms he actually suggests by taunting him:
John Ruskin named him as one of the three most influential people in history.
George Orwell named him one of the most admired authors, though he disagreed with him on virtually all moral and political issues. The modernist poet Edith Sitwell wrote a fictional biography of Swift, titled "I Live Under a Black Sun" and published in 1937.
The Swift Crater, a crater on the moon of Deimos Mars, is named after Jonathan Swift, who predicted the existence of the moon of Mars.
In honor of the old residence of Swift in Trim, there are several monuments in the city that mark his legacy. The most famous is Swift's Street, named after him. Trim also holds a recurring festival in honor of Swift, called 'Trim Swift Festival'.
Jake Arnott presents him in his 2017 novel The Fatal Tree.
A data analysis of library ownership 2017 reveals that Swift is Ireland's most popular writer, and that Gulliver's Travels is Ireland's most widely held literary work in libraries globally.
See also
- Poor Richard's Almanack
- Sweet and light
Note
References
External links
- Jonathan Swift in the Eighteenth Poetry Archive (ECPA)
- Ã, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Swift, Jonathan". EncyclopÃÆ'Â|dia Britannica (issue 11). Cambridge University Press.
- BBC audio file "Swift's Simple proposal ". Discussion of the BBC. Currently .
- Jonathan Swift in Curlie (based on DMOZ)
- Jonathan Swift at the National Portrait Gallery, London
- Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745) Dean of St. Dublin, Dublin Satirist at National Register of Archives
Works online
- Works by Jonathan Swift at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Jonathan Swift in the Internet Archive
- Works by Jonathan Swift on LibriVox (public domain audiobook)
- Works by Jonathan Swift in the Open Library
- Works by Jonathan Swift on the Online Book Page
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments