Jonathan Swift (1667--1745)
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Life Introduction
 Jonathan Swift, a posthumous child (遗腹子), was born
in Dublin, Ireland, of an English family, which had
important connections but little wealth.
 Through the generosity of an uncle, he was educated at
Kilkenny Grammar School and then Trinity College in
Dublin.
 Between 1689 and 1699 he worked as a private
secretary to a distant kinship Sir William Temple, a
retired diplomat.
 And there he also received a first-rate education in
politics through contact with Temple and many other
well-known politicians, learning much about the vice,
hypocrisy, intrigues, deception and corruption in the
political world.
Swift’s Literary Position and Works
Literary Position
 Swift is one of the greatest masters of English prose.
 Swift is a master satirist. Even today, he is still regarded
as a national hero in Ireland.
Works:
 The Tale of Tub (1704)
 Battle of the Books (written in 1679, published in 1704)
 Gulliver’s Travels (1726), his greatest satiric work
Swift’s Concerns in his Works
 Moral attributes
 Swift was a man of great moral integrity and social
charm. He had a deep hatred for all the rich oppressors
and a deep sympathy for all the poor and oppressed.
 Human nature
 His understanding of human nature is profound. In his
opinion, human nature is seriously and permanently
flawed. To better human life, enlightenment is needed,
but to redress it is very hard. He intends not to condemn
but to reform and improve man nature and human
institutions, there is often an under or overtone of
helplessness and indignation.
Swift’s Artistic Features
 Satire
 His satire is usually masked by an outward gravity and
an apparent earnestness which renders his satire all the
more powerful.
 Simplicity and Directness
 Swift is always most unsurpassed in the writing style of
simple, direct, precise prose. He defined a good style as
“proper words in proper places.” Clear, simple, concrete
diction, uncomplicated sentence structure, economic
and conciseness of language mark all his writings—
essays, poems and novels.
Introduction to Gulliver’s Travels
 Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan’s best fictional work, was
published in 1726, under the title of Travels into Several
Remote Nations of the World, by Samuel Gulliver. The
book contains four parts, each dealing with one
particular voyage during which Gulliver meets with
extraordinary adventures on some remote island after
he has met with shipwreck of piracy of some other
misfortune.
Part 1
 The first part tells about his experience in Lilliput, where
the inhabitants are only six inches tall), twelve times
smaller than the normal human beings. The emperor
believed himself to be the delight and terror of the
universe, but it appeared quite absurd to Gulliver who
was twelve times as tall as he. In his account of the two
parties in the country, distinguished by the use of high
and low heels, Swift satirizes the Tories and the Whigs in
England.
 Religious disputes were laughed at in an account of a
problem which divided the Lilliputians: “ Should eggs be
broken at the big end or the little end?”
Part 2
 In the second part, Gulliver is left alone in
Brobdingnag where people are not only ten times
taller and larger than ordinary human beings, but
also superior in wisdom. Gulliver now found
himself a dwarf among men sixth feet in height.
The king, who regarded Europe as if it were an
anthill.
Part 3
 The third part deals with mainly with his
accidental visit to the flying Island, where the
philosophers and projectors devote all their time
and energy to the study of some absurd
problems. Their scientists are engaged in
projects for exacting sunbeams out of
cucumbers, turning ice into gunpowder and
making cloth from cobweb. It is a parody on
scholastics and projectors.
Part 4
 The last part is a most interesting account of his
discoveries in the Houyhnhnm land, where horses are
endowed with reason and all good and admirable
qualities, and are the governing class.
 Contrary to the Houyhnhnms, the Yahoos （粗鲁之人）
possess every conceivable evil. They are malicious,
spiteful, envious, unclean and greedy. Gulliver admires
the life and ways of the horses, as much as he is
disgusted with the Yahoos, whose relations remind him
of those existing in English society to such a degree that
he shudders at the prospect of returning to his native.
Swift’s Skill in Gulliver’s Travels
 In structure, the four parts make an organic whole, with
each contrived upon an independent structure, and yet
complementing the others and contributing to the central
concern of study of human nature and life.
 The first two parts are generally considered the best
paired-up work. Here, man is observed from both ends of
a telescope.
 The exaggerated smallness in part 1 works just as
effectively as the exaggerated largeness in part 2. The
similarities between human beings and the Lilliputians
and the contrast between the Brobdingna giants and
human beings both bear reference to the possibilities of
human state. Part 3 furthers the criticism of the western
civilization and deals with false illusion about science,
philosophy, history and even immortality. The last part
leads the reader to a fundamental questions: What on
earth is a human being?
Previewing Work for A Modest Proposal
Qs:
 What is the narrator’s proposal? Do you
think that it is modest?
 How do you understand the subtitle?
 What tone is used here? Illustrate your
points with some examples from the text.
Analysis of A Modest Proposal
 Outline (4 parts)
 Part 1: Para1-7
(the present situation in Ireland
expect a proposal to
solve the problem of poor children beggars)
 Part 2: Para 8-19
(detailing his proposal)
 Part 3: Para 20-28
(illustrating the advantages of his proposal)
 Part 4: Para 29-33
(supposing an objection to his proposal )
Part 1
 What are the present situations in Ireland?
(Ireland falls in poverty and overpopulation. Poor female
beggars with their children, people in Ireland lack of
national loyalty, the English government is devouring
Ireland)
 What is Swift's attitude toward the beggars he describes
in the opening paragraph?
 Notice the narrator’s defense for his own proposal, and
the statistical data. (his computation and economic
mind)
Part 2
 What is his proposal?
(Para 10. 120,000 children, among which 20,000
reserved for breed, only ¼ to be males; the remaining
100,000 be offered in sale)
the plump and fat children will be good for feeding and
clothing
 Appreciate Para 9,10,12,14,15
Part 3
 The advantages of the proposal
a. it would greatly lessen the number of Papists
b. the poorer tenants will have something valuable of
their own
c. the money gained from transaction will circulate in the
country
d. their breeders will benefit from it directly
e. this food would bring great custom to taverns
f. this would be a great inducement to marriage
Part 4
 Anticipating the objection of the proposal
 Para 33
What is the narrator’s attitude in saying that “I have no
children by which I can propose to get a single penny,
the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past
childbearing”?
With what social groups does he identify himself?
 The speaker is a Protestant and a member of the Irish
upper class. While he professes sympathy for the plight
of the poor Catholic population, he also holds a fairly
contemptuous opinion of them. He takes great pains to
enumerate the advantages of his proposed project for
the wealthy, who would presumably be called upon to
implement it. Yet Swift's irony implicates this moneyed
class for their monetary greed, their personal
indulgence, their unflagging attention to their own selfinterest, and their indifference to the state of the poor
and the state of the nation as a whole.
Summary
 With bitter irony, that the poverty of the Irish people
should be relieved by the sale of their children, “at a
year old”, as food for the rich, the narrator put forward
his so-called perfect proposal .
 With the utmost gravity, he set out statistics to show the
revenue that would come if this idea were adopted.
 The remedy, Swift took care to point out, was only for
the kingdom of Ireland, not for the whole England.
 The last proposal is a most heartbreaking piece of
sarcasm that fiery indignation has given birth to and a
most powerful blow at the English government’s policy
of exploitation and oppression in Ireland.