Swift Strategies of Swift: An Investigation of the Concurrence of Poetic Politicality and Satiric Religiosity in the Works of Jonathon Swift

Abstract

“A childhood of neglect, an early career spent in a dependent position at Moor Park (Temple’s house), a life of suspense and disillusionment at court,…” David Nokes, a biographer of Swift. Swift’s acquaintance with Temple sharpened his literary imagination even though there had been many debates on Swift’s position in Temple’s household. His publication of Temple’s writings drew Swift towards literature and literary production rather than politics and political affairs. Had it not been for his being attracted to writing through Temple’s works in his youth and his literary circle in his maturity, Swift seemed to have a great tendency to be either a mere political writer or a sole church member. However, politics and religious issues never disappeared from his literary career and Swift never vanished wholly from political and religious arena. Politics is believed to have had most of his literary imagination under its control and Swift sometimes let his political thoughts be at liberty which he had kept forcibly in balance with literature during his literary life. For several times, politics defeated poetry in the internal struggle in Swift’s personality the outcomes of which were his Examiner, pamphlets of Swift and Steele, A Modest Proposal and finally Drapier but each time Swift’s artistic handling of the situation made posterity to think of him as a writer rather than a politician. For David Nokes “His most successful political writings are not his histories, in which he tries to unravel the skein of state events with the authority of an insider, but his satires, which demonstrate that ministers of state are merely footmen on stilts.”