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" Swift, Ireland and the aesthetic critique of modernity. "
Deeming, David.
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Latin Dissertation
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| Record Number
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1093994
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TLets312170
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| Main Entry
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Deeming, David.
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| Title & Author
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Swift, Ireland and the aesthetic critique of modernity.\ Deeming, David.
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| College
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Birkbeck (University of London)
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| Date
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1999
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| student score
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1999
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Abstract
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The thesis examines the cultural and political significance of the formal and stylisticstrategies in the work of Jonathan Swift; particularly the early prose satire A Tale of aTub. Given his Irish origins and the largely colonial basis of England's relationshipwith Ireland, Swift's aesthetic strategies are shown to offer a mode of aestheticresistance to, and interrogation of, English colonialism. In a rapidly modernising,secularising England national identity and social cohesion were being increasinglygalvanised through an aesthetic ideology that emphasised the function of the aestheticas that which can present a model of integration and shared values. Swift, drawingupon his experience of an Ireland socially fragmented by colonialism, emphasises thesimultaneous, if contradictory, function of the aesthetic as the domain of thesubjective imagination. An extreme wit, feared by Locke as that which will cause theindividual subject to forget his or her social responsibilities, itself fragments societyby encouraging the individual to inhabit an interiorised world of irrationalassociations. Swift, ostensibly satirising such behaviour in the Tale in the name of anEnglish nationalism, actually allows the logic of such an extreme wit to dominate.Thus, he utilises what Vivian Mercier has shown to be the modes of traditional Irishliterature, while simultaneously engaging with the (colonising, commercialising)ramifications of England's emergence into modernity. In the first, introductorychapter I explain, with reference to Swift's early life and work and to the critical workthat already exists on Swift, why this thesis is a necessary addition to such a body ofcriticism. Chapter Two constitutes a closer examination of the Tale, the strategies ofwhich are illuminated by a comparison with other works from the Anglo-Irishtradition: Burke, Swift's eighteenth-century Dublin biographers, the politicaleconomy of Sir Francis Brewster. Chapter Three turns to Swift's attempts to conformto English social and cultural modes in the first half of his career, particularly in TheExaminer of 1710-11. The thesis returns to the idea of Swift as an Irish literarysubverter in Chapter Four, this time by looking at the way the Tale and its companionpieceThe Battle of the Books employ a form of 'extreme' allegory described byWalter Benjamin as essentially baroque in origin, and so able to adopt a criticalposition towards the early enlightenment principles of Swift's mentor and patron, SirWilliam Temple. Given that the category of the modem aesthetic emergesconceptually as a product of the enlightenment, Chapter Five examines Swift's workin the context of subsequent European enlightenment thinkers Kant and Herder,showing how Swift can be said to mediate their respective positions. The thesisconcludes by arguing for Swift as, ultimately, a champion of reason; and goes on topoint towards how Swift's aesthetic critique has resonances for our owncontemporary situation: namely, how his early satirising of modem astrology is anearly recognition of the unreason inherent in mass culture.
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| Subject
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Swift, Jonathan; Satire; Irish; Colonialism
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| Added Entry
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Birkbeck (University of London)
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