A Tale of a Tub

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are elevated. Of the curious contrivance of modern theatres. These three machines emblematically represent the various sorts of authors. An apologetical dissertation for the Grub Street Writers, against their revolted rivals of Gresham and Will's. Superficial readers cannot easily find out Wisdom; which is compared to several pretty things. Commentaries promised on several writings of Grub Street authors: as Reynard the Fox, Tom Thumb, Dr Faustus, Whittington and his Cat, the Hind and Panther, Tommy Pots, and the Wise Men of Gotham. The Author's pen and person worn out in serving the State. Multiplicity of titles and dedications.] Swift also satirises contemporary developments in the book trade: the expanding commercialism of the literary marketplace, and the hybrid forms of scholarship, history, and pamphlet that it was spawning. The Tale is just such a hybrid. And it makes a nonsense of typographical innovation, the random and pointless use of asterisks, hyphens, and parentheses gesture towards an over-excited print culture whose sense of literary merit has got lost in new and various forms of textual egotism.

Farrell, John. "Swift and the Satiric Absolute." Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau. New York: Cornell UP, 2006. ISBN 0-8014-4410-1C. M. Webster, Swift's Tale of a Tub compared with Earlier Satires of the Puritans. Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 47/1 (March 1932) 171–178. William Wotton, Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning. [1694; 2nd enlarged ed. 1697; 3d enlarged ed. 1705].

Rawson, Claude. The Character of Swift's Satire: A Revised Focus. Newark: U. of Delaware Press, 1983. ISBN 0-87413-209-6Upon publication the public realised both that there was an allegory in the story of the brothers and that there were particular political references in the Digressions. A number of "Keys" appeared soon thereafter, analogous to contemporary services like CliffsNotes or Spark Notes. "Keys" offered the reader a commentary on the Tale and explanations of its references. Edmund Curll rushed out a Key to the work, and William Wotton offered up an "Answer" to the author of the work. There is a strange paradox here: Swift wanted to disavow his connection with the work, yet at the same time he wanted the genius evident in the satire to be recognised as his. But this answerer insists, and says, what he chiefly dislikes is the design: what that was, I have already told, and I believe there is not a person in England who can understand that book, that ever imagined it to have been anything else, but to expose the abuses and corruptions in learning and religion.

But your governor perhaps may still insist, and put the question: What is then become of those immense bales of paper which must needs have been employed in such numbers of books? Can these also be wholly annihilate, and so of a sudden, as I pretend? What shall I say in return of so invidious an objection? It ill befits the distance between your highness and me to send you for ocular conviction to a jakes, or an oven, to the windows of a bawdy-house, or to a sordid lantern. 33 Books, like men their authors, have no more than one way of coming into the world; but there are ten thousand to go out of it and return no more. Clark, John R. "The Decorum of Madness". Form and Frenzy in Swift's Tale of a Tub. By Clark. New York City:Cornell UP, 1970. But I forget that I am expatiating on a subject wherein I have no concern, having neither a talent nor an inclination for satire. On the other side, I am so entirely satisfied with the whole present procedure of human things, that I have been for some years preparing materials towards A Panegyric Upon the World; to which I intended to add a second part, entitled, A Modest Defence of the Proceedings of the Rabble in all Ages. Both these I had thoughts to publish, by way of appendix to the following treatise; but finding my common-place book fill much slower than I had reason to expect, I have chosen to defer them to another occasion. Besides, I have been unhappily prevented in that design by a certain domestic misfortune; in the particulars whereof, though it would be very seasonable, and much in the modern way, to inform the gentle reader, and would also be of great assistance towards extending this preface into the size now in vogue, which by rule ought to be large in proportion as the subsequent volume is small; yet I shall now dismiss our impatient reader from any farther attendance at the porch; and having duly prepared his mind by a preliminary discourse, shall gladly introduce him to the sublime mysteries that ensue. A Tale of a Tub, &c. Section I: The Introduction[A physico-mythological dissertation on the different sorts of oratorial machines. Of the bar and the bench. The Author fond of the number Three; promises a panegyric on it. Of pulpits; which are the best. Of ladders; on which the British orators surpass all others. Of the stage itinerant; the seminary of the two former. A physical reason why those machines For more information on the complex relationship between Swift, Temple, and Swift's satirical style, see John Traugott, " A Tale of a Tub", The Character of Swift's Satire: A Revised Focus, Ed. Claude Rawson, Newark: University of Delaware Press (1983), 90–100; A. C. Elias, Jr. Swift at Moor Park: Problems in Biography and Criticism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1982): 155–59, 173–86.If, by altering the title, I could make the same materials serve for another dedication, (as my betters have done,) it would help to make up my loss; but I have made several persons dip here and there in those papers, and before they read three lines, they have all assured me plainly, that they cannot possibly be applied to an persons besides your lordship.

For one reading of the "Digression on Madness", see Ehrenpreis, Swift and his Contemporaries, 216–25. However, further on, he seems to assert the originality of the work, and suggests that there is only one original genius that could have composed a work of such verve and erudition. Taking issue both his critics' charges that he had plagiarised the work, and with the fact that a man called Thomas Swift had recently claimed to have written the Tale, the apology asserts:Christopher Fox, Walking Naboth's vineyards: new studies of Swift (University of Notre Dame Ward-Philips lectures in English language and literature, Vol. 13). (Notre Dame/Indiana 1995). All upcoming public events are going ahead as planned and you can find more information on our events blog