Jonathan Swift
Biography of Jonathan Swift :
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick\'s Cathedral, Dublin.
He is remembered for works such as
Gulliver\'s Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier\'s Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and
A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the earliest prose satirist in English language. Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier—or even anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire: the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
Jonathan Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey\'s Court, Dublin, and was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift and wife Abigail Erick. His father was Irish born and his mother was the sister of the vicar of Frisby-on-the-Wreake, England. Swift was born seven months after his father\'s untimely death. Most of the facts of Swift\'s early life are obscure and even contradictory. It is widely believed that his mother returned to England when Jonathan was still very young, leaving him to be raised by his father\'s family.
In 1682, he attended Dublin University, earning his B.A. in 1686. Swift was studying for his Master\'s degree when political troubles in Ireland surrounding the Glorious Revolution forced him to leave for England in 1688, where his mother helped him get a position as secretary and personal assistant of Sir William Temple at Moor Park, Farnham. Gaining the confidence of his employer, Swift "was often trusted with matters of great importance.
When Swift took up his residence at Moor Park, he met Esther Johnson, then eight years old, the fatherless daughter of one of the household servants. Swift acted as her tutor and mentor, giving her the nickname "Stella", and the two maintained a close but ambiguous relationship for the rest of Esther\'s life.
Swift left Temple in 1690 for Ireland because of his health, but returned to Moor Park the following year. The fits of vertigo—now known to be Ménière\'s disease—would continue to plague Swift throughout his life. During this second stay with Temple, Swift received his M.A. from Hertford College, Oxford in 1692.
Writer
In February 1702, Swift received his Doctor of Divinity degree from Trinity College, Dublin. That spring he traveled to England and returned to Ireland in October, accompanied by Esther Johnson—now twenty years old—and his friend Rebecca Dingley, another member of William Temple\'s household. There is a great mystery and controversy over Swift\'s relationship with Esther Johnson. Many hold that they were secretly married in 1716.
During his visits to England in these years Swift published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books (1704) and began to gain a reputation as a writer. This led to close, lifelong friendships with Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot, forming the core of the Martinus Scriblerus Club (founded in 1713).
Swift\'s first major prose work, A Tale of a Tub, demonstrates many of the themes and stylistic techniques he would employ in his later work. In its main thread, the Tale recounts the exploits of three sons, representing the main threads of Christianity, who receive a bequest from their father of a coat each, with the added instructions to make no alterations whatsoever. However, the sons soon find that their coats have fallen out of current fashion, and begin to look for loopholes in their father\'s will that will let them make the needed alterations. As each finds his own means of getting around their father\'s admonition, they struggle with each other for power. Inserted into this story, in alternating chapters, the narrator includes a series of whimsical "digressions" on various subjects.
Gulliver\'s Travels was published in 1726. It is regarded as his masterpiece. As with his other writings, the Travels was published under a pseudonym, the fictional Lemuel Gulliver, a ship\'s surgeon and later a sea captain. Though it has often been mistakenly thought of and published as a children\'s book, it is a satire of human nature based on Swift\'s experience of his times. Gulliver\'s Travels is an anatomy of human nature, a sardonic looking-glass. It asks its readers to refute it, to deny that it has adequately characterized human nature and society. Each of the four books—recounting four voyages to mostly-fictional exotic lands—has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride.
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Ireland in the Days of Dean Swift Irish Tracts, 1720 to 1734
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Gulliver's Reizen naar Lilliput en Brobdingnag
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