Jonathan Swift Essays (Examples)

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Jonathan Swift Was Born in
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(Jonathan Swift's eligious Beliefs)
Nowhere did Jonathan Swift show his capacity for satire than in his work, 'A Modest Proposal', for preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to their Parents or Country, and for making them Beneficial to the Public. Jonathan mentions within this work, "the streets, the roads, the cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by there, four, or sic children," and these children, he stated, would all be dressed in rags, and, being hungry and starving, beg for food to fill their stomachs. Their mothers, too, would be forced to stroll through the streets, in search of alms, so that they may feed their infants and children. These poor deprived children would, inevitably, become thieves as they became older, for want of any other work. Otherwise, Jonathan says, they would leave their dear native country, and then have….

Swift's Gulliver's Travels
'My Reconcilement to the Yahoo-kind in general might not be so difficult, if they would be content with those Vices and Follies only which Nature hath entitled them," (Chapter 12). The narrator's words illustrate a universal aspect of human nature: the creation of an "us vs. them" mentality that at its worst leads to racism. In fact, Gulliver's voyage to the land of the Houyhnhnms contains elements of racial tension and ethnic identity. The Houyhnhnms are the dominant race; although they do exhibit positive qualities to aspire to, such as altruism, intelligence, and rationality, they nevertheless persecute the Yahoos and even suggest castrating them to kill of their race. While the Houyhnhnms are admirable in many respects, Gulliver fails to notice their faults and failings. For instance, the Houyhnhnms are excessively rational and in some ways symbolize an exaggeration of human reason. Nevertheless, Gulliver wishes to remain with….

The primary reason for this is the fact that people like Swift's projector and various politicians like him are far too successful in manipulating language to their own advantage. hile Orwell did not live in our day, he was truly a visionary and he is not far off the mark when it comes to politics and the power of persuasion. Swift reinforces this notion with his proposal, which is anything but modest. Swift's projector proves Orwell's theory that we can manipulate language and, as a result, language becomes a major factor in human thought. Thought, in turn, influences language, and together, these manipulations can mean nothing but trouble. If we allow such atrocities to occur, we will surely live with nothing but a world of deceivers in a few decades. ords mean things and it is important to keep language free from negative influence of humanity whenever we can.….

Swift
'The Lady's Dressing Room" is an offhanded ode to women by Jonathan Swift and narrated by the Queen of Love. The poem basically describes the dressing room of Celia, seen through the spying eyes of her lover Strephon. Strephon has so idealized his beloved -- and all other women -- that when he realizes that she is a mere human being, he wretches. Finally he realizes, "Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!" Swift's poem is not, as a casual reading would suggest, disparaging toward women. Rather, Swift points out that while Celia may be vain and self-conscious, obsessed with her appearance, she is nevertheless a human being. Strephon has failed to acknowledge Celia's humanity and so when he sees stains on her stockings and smells her bodily discharges, he is turned off to all women. The Queen of Love laments Strephon's attitude in the final stanza of the poem: "I pity….

Product Liability
Jonathan Swift's use of satire in his story "Gulliver's Travels" is not only a useful employment of its best purposes but perhaps also the only way to craft this type of critical argument. Critical thought towards society and its class structure has always been art's most powerful trait. Swift's literature is used in this manner in his famous story. The purpose of this essay is to examine Swift's use of satire in his attempts to socially comment on his environment. This essay will give several examples of this approach in the story and relate these instances into the larger theme of the author's style and approach.

Example 1: Gulliver's First Discovery

Swift's 1726 story, Gulliver's Travels was written from the standpoint of a naval shipping surgeon or doctor named Lemuel Gulliver. Gulliver is an eager and open minded middle class English gentlemen married without any children. The story begins as Gulliver….

Thus, in 1714, Swift returned to Ireland, "to die like a poisoned rat in a hole," as he reported (Hunting 22).
Yet Swift slowly reconciled himself to his life in Ireland and the 1720's proved to be an incredibly creative time for him, including his famous "Gulliver's Travels" in 1726 (Hunting 23). In his seventieth year he wrote that walking though the streets of Dublin, he received "a thousand hats and blessings" (Hunting 24).

Swift was a great Irish patriot and became a popular hero and legend in his own lifetime and achieved all the fame he had so passionately desired when young (Rowse 215). After his death he became a figure of folklore, and all around Ireland, there are spots associated with him such as Laracor, ood Park Kilroot and Gosford (Rowse 215). In the Deanery at St. Patrick's his skull ornamented the sideboard in the dining-room, a secular relic….

ollstonecraft calls for equality among men, rather than inequality based on money, privilege and being wellborn. Again the duality of power and oppression is spoken of with zeal as ollstonecraft goes on to pick apart all of the institutions that so many hold dear by virtue of false assumptions and tradition.
There is really no conflict that has been more detailed and railed against than the duality of power and oppression and yet this duality reinvents itself over and over in the culture of man, with the powerful claiming superior knowledge and the oppressed being taught the rhetoric that supports it. In Swift's comical economic writing about the need to find an economic solution for a human problem as well as in ollstonecraft's assassination of faulty and self-aggrandizing power mongering there is clear demonstration of this duality as it appears in their context and by their observations. Each of these….

Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal” in 1729 as piece of political satire, or as Cody (2000) puts it, a “disgusted parody” and a “savage indictment,” (p. 1). As it falls within the genre of satire, there is a healthy dose of humor embedded in the text but also rich political commentary as well. As both the course text and Cody (2000) point out, Swift was concerned about issues like class conflict and discrimination against the Irish. Swift recognized that the English were systematically exploiting the Irish. “A Modest Proposal” makes an outlandish case for eating children as the solution to poverty.
Swift writes “A Modest Proposal” in first person, effectively making it seem that he truly believes in what he is saying. The approach can be considered ironic, in that what Swift states on the surface is not precisely what he means. The entire substantive content, and not just the….

Swift's Modesty
PAGES 3 WORDS 979

Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is quite an unusual work of literature, and one which certainly has a surprise ending. The only allusions to the wild solution that the author will offer to the very real problem plaguing the streets of Ireland -- that of the unfortunate beggar children and their mothers of Irish distinction -- is the fact that it is quite obvious that this essay is a satire. All satires create humor around human folly; that which is made laughable time and again throughout this narrative is the lack of concern on the part of the English for the plight of the Irish. It is due to this lack of concern that Swift quite facetiously, and more than a little bit sarcastically, advocates eating the misfortunate children, which is the surprise ending of this essay -- as well as the fact that the author, after advocating this….

" For example, of the materialism and penchant for "conspicuous consumption" among Romans of the time, Juvenal observes:
in Rome we must toe the line of fashion, spending beyond our means, and often non-borrowed credit.

It's a universal failing: here we all live in pretentious poverty. To cut a long story short, there's a price-tag on everything in Rome. hat does it cost to greet Cossus, or extract one tight-lipped nod from Veiento the honors-broker? (180-5).

Criticizing the inflated costs of everything in Rome, Juvenal also states:

inflation swells the rent of your miserable flat, inflation hits the keep of your hungry slaves, your own humble dinner. (166-7)

Moreover, within the declining Roman society described by Juvenal's Third Satire, wealth is so revered for its own sake that, when, for instance, a rich man's house burns to the ground, his house and all his belongings will soon be replaced by better than what he had….

Pope and Swift: Satirists of Their Day
In Swift's Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift and Pope's An Epistle to Arbuthnot, the authors seem to vindicate their use of satire, while satirizing others. Alexander Pope, in his preface to An Epistle to Arbuthnot, identifies the motivation of the poem as a response to attacks on his "Person, Morals, and Family" and to give "truer information" of himself (Pope 1733). Pope warns readers that many would recognize allusions to them in it, "but I have, for the most part spar'd their Names, and they may escape being laugh'd at" (Pope 1733). In 1731, shortly before Pope wrote his Epistle, Pope's friend Jonathan Swift completed Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift and published it almost a decade later in 1739. After his friend Esther Johnson died, the theme of death "became a frequent feature in Swift's life" (Wikipedia, 2012). Swift then….

(2179)
Here we have another example of how Swift uses his setting as a perfect weapon for his argument. Not all people are respected and soome are treated badly. These statements are morbid but they are true and that is why this essay succeeds.

Swift's satire has a greter impact because he opens his argument up for debate. Any argument is allowable as long as it is "equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual" (2180). Furthermore, he writes to anyone that believes they have a better solution to the problems to:

ask the parents of these mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food at a year old, in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes, as they have since gone through, by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or….

Reason in the faith and satire of Dryden and Swift
The neoclassical age in which both John Dryden and Jonathan Swift penned their most noteworthy prose is often also called 'The Age of Reason.' However, although this valorization of reason and rationality may be a fair characterization of much of the Age of human Enlightenment, Dryden and Swift do not deploy nor valorize reason in the same fashion. For Dryden, reason is the key to humanity's connection with the divine and political freedom. In Swift's social and religious satires, however, human confidence in its rationality is just as absurd as overconfidence in human religious political and social institutions to create just and fair societies.

Dryden's religious poem "Religio Laici" begins with a definition of reason as the most perfect mode of the ultimate human understanding of the divine. Dryden writes, "as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars./To lonely, weary, wand'ring….

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Satire and Irony in Dublin

LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT

Jonathan Swift is widely regarded as the greatest writer of satire in English literature. Yet it is crucial for understanding Swift's satire to know that he was not really English. Swift was born in Dublin in 1667, to a family that originally had emigrated from England -- for this reason, he is generally described as "Anglo-Irish." Swift did his university studies in Dublin at Trinity College, graduating in 1686. From here he became the personal secretary to a politician and writer, Sir William Temple, and moved to England. Political machinations, however, hampered Swift's advancement in a political career -- instead he would end up taking a position in the Protestant Church of Ireland, ultimately rising to the position of Dean at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.

Swift's career encompassed both literature and politics. As a wit and satirist, he was close friends….

Modern capitalist philosophy has been advanced in a way that has little to do with what Smith really thought and taught. Smith believed that the invisible hand operated in a societal context. The reason Smith had such a positive philosophy of freedom was that he believed that human beings, would behave best if not compelled to merely serve the personal interests of a sovereign. Humans had a right to self-determination and to serve their own interests. However, when competition was threatened -- for example, when individuals by fair means or foul gained too much market power and created monopolies -- then it was appropriate for the government to step in. Smith believed that self-interest could prove to be beneficial to others but he did not believe that selfishness was an end in and of itself.
Justice and democracy are necessary for capitalism to function, but the rampant selfishness and lack….

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8 Pages
Term Paper

Literature

Jonathan Swift Was Born in

Words: 3416
Length: 8 Pages
Type: Term Paper

(Jonathan Swift's eligious Beliefs) Nowhere did Jonathan Swift show his capacity for satire than in his work, 'A Modest Proposal', for preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland…

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3 Pages
Term Paper

Race

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travel Part IV

Words: 911
Length: 3 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Swift's Gulliver's Travels 'My Reconcilement to the Yahoo-kind in general might not be so difficult, if they would be content with those Vices and Follies only which Nature hath entitled…

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6 Pages
Essay

Communication - Language

Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal

Words: 1703
Length: 6 Pages
Type: Essay

The primary reason for this is the fact that people like Swift's projector and various politicians like him are far too successful in manipulating language to their own…

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3 Pages
Term Paper

Sports - Women

Lady's Dressing Room by Jonathan Swift

Words: 972
Length: 3 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Swift 'The Lady's Dressing Room" is an offhanded ode to women by Jonathan Swift and narrated by the Queen of Love. The poem basically describes the dressing room of Celia,…

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6 Pages
Essay

Literature

Product Liability Jonathan Swift's Use of Satire

Words: 1669
Length: 6 Pages
Type: Essay

Product Liability Jonathan Swift's use of satire in his story "Gulliver's Travels" is not only a useful employment of its best purposes but perhaps also the only way to craft…

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8 Pages
Term Paper

Literature

Irish Writers Jonathan Swift James

Words: 2170
Length: 8 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Thus, in 1714, Swift returned to Ireland, "to die like a poisoned rat in a hole," as he reported (Hunting 22). Yet Swift slowly reconciled himself to his life…

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5 Pages
Term Paper

Sports - Women

Duality Jonathan Swift and Mary

Words: 1606
Length: 5 Pages
Type: Term Paper

ollstonecraft calls for equality among men, rather than inequality based on money, privilege and being wellborn. Again the duality of power and oppression is spoken of with zeal…

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1 Pages
Essay

English Literature

Swifts modest proposal ending

Words: 340
Length: 1 Pages
Type: Essay

Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal” in 1729 as piece of political satire, or as Cody (2000) puts it, a “disgusted parody” and a “savage indictment,” (p. 1). As…

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3 Pages
Essay

Literature

Swift's Modesty

Words: 979
Length: 3 Pages
Type: Essay

Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is quite an unusual work of literature, and one which certainly has a surprise ending. The only allusions to the wild solution that…

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13 Pages
Term Paper

Literature

Horace Juvenal Pope Dryden Swift

Words: 4162
Length: 13 Pages
Type: Term Paper

" For example, of the materialism and penchant for "conspicuous consumption" among Romans of the time, Juvenal observes: in Rome we must toe the line of fashion, spending beyond our…

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3 Pages
Essay

Literature

Pope and Swift Satirists of Their Day

Words: 1452
Length: 3 Pages
Type: Essay

Pope and Swift: Satirists of Their Day In Swift's Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift and Pope's An Epistle to Arbuthnot, the authors seem to vindicate their use of…

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3 Pages
Term Paper

Black Studies - Philosophy

Setting in Jonathon Swift's a

Words: 858
Length: 3 Pages
Type: Term Paper

(2179) Here we have another example of how Swift uses his setting as a perfect weapon for his argument. Not all people are respected and soome are treated badly.…

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3 Pages
Term Paper

Mythology - Religion

Presentation of Reason in the Work of Dryden and Swift

Words: 1005
Length: 3 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Reason in the faith and satire of Dryden and Swift The neoclassical age in which both John Dryden and Jonathan Swift penned their most noteworthy prose is often also…

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3 Pages
Research Paper

Literature

Biographical Report on Author Artist

Words: 870
Length: 3 Pages
Type: Research Paper

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Satire and Irony in Dublin LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT Jonathan Swift is widely regarded as the greatest writer of satire in English literature. Yet it is crucial for understanding…

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4 Pages
Book Report

Economics

Saving Adam Smith by Jonathan

Words: 1497
Length: 4 Pages
Type: Book Report

Modern capitalist philosophy has been advanced in a way that has little to do with what Smith really thought and taught. Smith believed that the invisible hand operated…

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