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English Fiction & Prose Literature - General & Miscellaneous - Literary Criticism, Satire - Literary Criticism, General & Miscellaneous Irish Fiction & Prose Literature - Literary Criticism, English Fiction & Prose Literature - 18th Century - Literary Cri
Swift's Politics: A Study in Disaffection by Ian Higgins β€” book cover

Swift's Politics: A Study in Disaffection

by Ian Higgins, Howard Erskine-Hill (Editor), John J. Richetti
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Overview

Modern scholarship has represented Jonathan Swift as both an Old Whig and a non-Jacobite Tory. Ian Higgins' contextual reassessment of Swift's political writing and recorded opinion considers the interpretative problems they present. It explores the consonance of Swift's political writing with militant Jacobite Tory writing on affairs of Church and State, and demonstrates Swift's dissimilarity from the Old Whig writers with whom modern criticism has misleadingly identified him. Swift's writings of the 1690s, during the last four years of Queen Anne's reign, and after the Hanoverian succession are shown to contain Jacobitical political implications when examined in their context in the 'paper wars' of the period. Higgins concentrates on the partisan meanings of the great satires A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels, and represents Swift (as he was read by his contemporaries) as a disaffected High Church Anglican extremist with Jacobite inclinations.

Synopsis

A contextual reassessment of Swift's political writing concentrating on A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels.

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Editorials

From the Publisher

'An exceptionally learned and persuasive study.' Brean S. Hammond, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth

Book Details

Published
April 1, 2006
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Pages
248
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780521025683

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