Table Of ContentSwift’s Satires on Modernism
DOI: 10.1057/9781137311047
Also by G. Douglas Atkins
The FaiTh oF John DryDen: Change and Continuity
reaDing DeConsTruCTion/DeConsTruCTive reaDing
WriTing anD reaDing DiFFerenTly: Deconstruction and the Teaching of Composition
and literature (co-edited with Michael L. Johnson)
QuesTs oF DiFFerenCe: reading Pope’s Poems
shakesPeare anD DeConsTruCTion (co-edited with David M. Bergeron)
ConTemPorary liTerary Theory (co-edited with Laura Morrow)
geoFFrey harTman: Criticism as answerable style
esTranging The Familiar: Toward a revitalized Critical Writing
TraCing The essay: Through experience to Truth
reaDing essays: an invitation
on The Familiar essay: Challenging academic orthodoxies
liTerary PaThs To religious unDersTanDing: essays on Dryden, Pope, keats,
george eliot, Joyce, T.s. eliot, and e.B. White
T.s. elioT anD The essay: From The Sacred Wood to Four Quartets
reaDing T.s. elioT: Four Quartets and the Journey toward understanding
e.B. WhiTe: The essayist as First-Class Writer
T.s. elioT maTerializeD: literal meaning and embodied Truth
DOI: 10.1057/9781137311047
Swift’s Satires
on Modernism:
Battlegrounds of
Reading and Writing
g. Douglas atkins
DOI: 10.1057/9781137311047
swift’s satires on modernism
Copyright © g. Douglas atkins, 2013.
all rights reserved.
First published in 2013 by
Palgrave maCmillan®
in the united states—a division of st. martin’s Press llC,
175 Fifth avenue, new york, ny 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the uk, europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave macmillan, a division of macmillan Publishers limited,
registered in england, company number 785998, of houndmills,
Basingstoke, hampshire rg21 6Xs.
Palgrave macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and macmillan® are registered trademarks in the united states,
the united kingdom, europe and other countries.
isBn: 978–1–137–32155–8 ePuB
isBn: 978–1–137–31104–7 PDF
isBn: 978–1–137–31162–7 hardback
library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
library of Congress.
a catalogue record of the book is available from the British library.
First edition: 2013
www.palgrave.com/pivot
doi: 10.1057/9781137311047
Contents
Preface vi
Introduction—The Spider and the Bee:
Ancients vs. Moderns and The Battle of the
Books 1
1 The World Swift Saw Aborning 8
2 The Priesthood of All Readers: “This Good
Had Full as Bad a Consequence” 22
3 Swift and the Modern Personal Essay: A
Tale of a Tub and “A Modest Proposal” 45
4 Tripping and Troping, Inside and Out:
Surface, Depth, and the “Converting
Imagination” in A Tale of a Tub 68
5 “The Physical Act of Worship, Not the
Mental Act of Belief or Assent”: Reading
An Argument against Abolishing Christianity 82
Bibliography 96
Index 100
DOI: 10.1057/9781137311047 v
Preface
This book revisits, from fresh perspectives, the late seven-
teenth-century version of the perennial warfare between
ancients and moderns, then often instanced as “the battle
of the books.” swift effectively represented the controversy,
and the issues to this day at stake, in his allegory of the
spider and the bee (in The Battle of the Books [1704]),
which juxtaposes the bee’s excursions outside himself with
the spider’s total reliance on his own “filth.” This crucial
distinction becomes the basis for reading anew some of
swift’s major prose satires, notably including the enigmatic
and vexing A Tale of a Tub (1704).
With close attention to the context opened up by John
Dryden’s essay-poem Religio Laici or A Laymans Faith
(1682), which posits reading as the fundamental site of
ancient and modern differences, i place swift’s important
and complex satires on the ancients and moderns in the
context of the post-reformation “priesthood of all read-
ers.” These texts include A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the
Books, and The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, published
together in 1704, as well as The Argument against Abolishing
Christianity (1708).
The readings offered here derive from new contexts, not
just reading as site and the post-reformation “priesthood
of all readers,” but also the rise and development of the
essay as form, all of which share the modern premium on
inwardness and personality that characterizes the issues at
stake between swift’s (ancient) bee and (modern) spider.
reading emerges, in fact, as the hinge that holds the two
parts of the Tale together (the religious allegory and the
vi DOI: 10.1057/9781137311047
Preface vii
“digressions”). The incredible richness of the Tale appears, further, in the
new context revealed of the essay as form, which swift’s work satirizes
even while proceeding from within it. indeed, this study establishes the
complex relation that governs swift’s nuanced position vis-à-vis new
forms and modern ideas. via extended attention to the reading and
interpretation of scriptural texts, the Tale thus also contemplates the will-
ing nature of texts as it dramatizes the will-fulness of (modern) readers,
given to the authority of “the spirit” and “inner light,” and considers
the relation of commentary and primary text. a fresh look at the con-
troversial Argument against Abolishing Christianity reveals swift’s central
concerns about the “private spirit” and the ascendancy of inwardness at
the expense of public worship.
i do not conceive of the readings here offered as exhaustive. my
approach is essayistic rather than encyclopedic. The book is, accordingly,
neither quite linear in direction nor argumentative in mode and tone
(although at times i do express differences with scholars, particularly
those who have misread swift as an “anglican rationalist”). my fondest
hope is to attract academic and non-specialist readers (alike).
This little book grows out of my decades-long teaching of a Freshman-
sophomore honors course at the university of kansas in the ancients,
moderns, and modernists, and i dedicate it to the thousands of students
from whom it has been my privilege to learn during forty-plus years of
making available, and trying to elucidate, an alternative understanding
to that that most of them have inherited or imbibed, this via some of the
great works of Western literature from homer to geoffrey hill.
A note on texts
as my notes indicate, i have relied upon and cited readily available edi-
tions of swift, wherever possible. i have, though, consulted the respected
scholarly edition of the Tale edited by guthkelch and nichol smith, as
well as my own copy of the 1710 Tale, with swift’s additions there to the
first edition.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137311047
DOI: 10.1057/9781137311047
Introduction—The Spider and
the Bee: Ancients vs. Moderns
and The Battle of the Books
Abstract: Published in 1704 along with a Tale of a Tub
and The mechanical operation of the spirit, The Battle of
the Books joins those satires in addressing the ongoing
Ancients–Moderns Controversy. The Battle of the Books
is a straightforward allegory in which, at one point, a
scurrilous spider, representing the Moderns, verbally
assaults the obviously favored bee. The distinctions between
the two—e.g., utter self-dependence vs. wide-ranging
exploration—establish valuable but often underappreciated
links with the other satires published with The Battle of the
Books, form the basis of the age-old and perennial conflict,
and represent the satirist’s understanding of the issues at
stake.
Atkins, G. Douglas. Swift’s Satires on Modernism:
Battlegrounds of Reading and Writing. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. doi: 10.1057/9781137311047.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137311047 1
