Book contents
- Jonathan Swift in Context
- Jonathan Swift in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Abbreviations
- Part I Personal
- Chapter 1 Biography
- Chapter 2 Friends and Family
- Chapter 3 Health and Sickness
- Chapter 4 Reason and Unreason
- Part II Publishing History and Legacy
- Part III Literary Background
- Part IV Genres
- Part V The External World
- Part VI Social and Intellectual Topics
- Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 3 - Health and Sickness
from Part I - Personal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 May 2024
- Jonathan Swift in Context
- Jonathan Swift in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Abbreviations
- Part I Personal
- Chapter 1 Biography
- Chapter 2 Friends and Family
- Chapter 3 Health and Sickness
- Chapter 4 Reason and Unreason
- Part II Publishing History and Legacy
- Part III Literary Background
- Part IV Genres
- Part V The External World
- Part VI Social and Intellectual Topics
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
For Swift, sickness and health were personal, moral, and political. This chapter focuses on Swift’s articulation of disgust, in particular the disgust towards the female body that readers encounter in poems such as ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’ (1732) and ‘A Beautiful Young Nymph going to Bed’ (1734), as well as Gulliver’s revulsion at the monstrous Brobdingnagian breast. Swift depicted a sickeningly dirty world for a culture and class for whom politeness, civility and refinement were associated with cleanliness. In their own disgust and repulsion at Swift’s filthy rudeness, readers resist his satire’s collapse of dichotomies. The moral and the physical converge in his work as antinomies of health and sickness collide with oppositions of purity and filth.
Keywords
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- Information
- Jonathan Swift in Context , pp. 18 - 25Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024