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Swift's Project: A Religious and Political Satire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Leland D. Peterson
Leland D. Peterson*
Affiliation:
Old Dominion College, Norfolk, Virginia
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Extract

In his study of Swift's satire Edward Rosenheim observes that some satirical works are ephemeral and do not outlive the issues that give them birth: “Like any form of pamphleteering, satire tends to claim the attention of the reading public only so long as that public is capable of a concern, approximating that of the satirist himself, for the questions under discussion.” The tract of Swift's which I am about to discuss was certainly occasional and has but modest claims to universality; indeed, there is no general agreement even now among Swift's commentators that the work originally had a satiric intent: most prefer to read it, the Project for the Advancement of Religion and Reformation of Manners (1709), as a serious reforming tract of the times. As such, the Project is undoubtedly of limited interest, but it yields hitherto unsuspected complexities and ironies, not to mention comedy, when we inquire into the now forgotten issues that gave it birth.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 82 , Issue 1 , March 1967 , pp. 54 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1967

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References

1 Edward W. Rosenheim, Jr., Swift and the Satirist's Art (Chicago, 1963), p. 103.

2 In The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1939–63), ii, 41–63. All references in this paper to the works of Swift are from the Davis edition.

3 John Forster, Life of Jonathan Swift (London, 1875), p. 214; Ricardo Quintana, Swift: An Introduction (Oxford, 1955), p. 85; Herbert Davis, The Satire of Jonathan Swift (New York, 1947), p. 51; John Middleton Murry, Jonathan Swift (London, 1954), p. 143; and Martin Price, Swift's Rhetorical Art (New Haven, 1953), pp. 103–104.

4 William B. Ewald, Jr., The Masks of Jonathan Swift (Oxford, 1954), pp. 43–47.

5 Maurice Quinlan, “Swift's Project for the Advancement of Religion and the Reformation of Manners,” PMLA, lxxi (1956), 201–212.

6 Pensées and the Provincial Letters (New York: Modern Library, 1941), p. 83.

7 The Works of Dr. John Tillolson, ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1820), i, 421–422. Subsequent references are parenthetical.

8 See C. M. Webster, “Swift's Tale of a Tub Compared with Earlier Satires of the Puritans,” PMLA, xlvii (1932), 171–178; and “The Satiric Background of the Attack on the Puritans in Swift's Tale of a Tub,” PMLA, l (1935), 210–223.

9 The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer (Oxford, 1955), v, 248.

10 Defoe's ‘Review,‘ ed. A. W. Secord, Columbia Univ. Press Facsimile (New York, 1938), ii, 230 (Tuesday, 17 July 1705).

11 William T. Morgan, English Political Parties and Leaders in the Reign of Queen Anne (New Haven, 1920), pp. 86–87.

12 The Character of a Low-Church-Man, 3rd ed. ([London] Printed and Sold by the Booksellers of Great-Britain [1702?]), p. 6.

13 The best account of this is in Garnet V. Portus, Caritas Anglicana (London, 1912), a full-length study of the Society for the Reformation of Manners.

14 Quoted in Abbie Turner Scudi, The Sacheverell Affair, Columbia Univ. Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, No. 456 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1939), p. 34.

15 See F. M. Darnall, “Swift's Belief in Immortality,” MLN, xlvii (1932), 448–451.

16 See, for instance, Ernest Tuveson, “Swift, the Dean as Satirist,” UTQ, xxii (1952–53), 368–375, and James Brown, “Swift as Moralist,” PQ, xxxiii (1954), 368–387. Both are much indebted to influential essays by Louis Landa, who was one of the first to insist upon the relevance of Swift's sermons in determining the meaning of works like Gulliver's Travels. See Landa's “Jonathan Swift,” in English Institute Essays, 1946 (New York, 1947), pp. 20–35.

17 “The Difficulty of Knowing One's-Self,” ix, 351. This sermon has been relegated to apocrypha in the Davis edition of Swift's Works (Appendix D, Vol. ix). The quotation I take from the sermon is relevant, but is not by any means the keystone of my argument.

18 “On the Testimony of Conscience,” ix, 150–158. An authenticated sermon.

19 Bonamy Dobrée, English Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century, 1700–1740 (Vol. vii of the Oxford History of English Literature) (Oxford, 1959), p. 444.

20 A Help to a National Reformation, 5th ed. (London, 1702).

21 A Proclamation, For the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue, And For the Preventing and Punishing of Vice, Prophaneness, and Immorality (London, 1702). The Widener Library at Harvard was kind enough to send me a photostatic copy of Queen Anne's proclamation; King William's is in pp. 21–26 of A Help. As the proclamations were to be read four times a year in every church after the divine service, we may assume that most Englishmen were familiar with their contents. Similar proclamations had been issued by Charles II in 1660 and 1663, and in 1687 the mayor and aldermen of London issued a proclamation pointing out the transgressions against laws prohibiting immorality (see Portus, pp. 32–34).

22 Cf. C. H. Firth, “Dean Swift and Ecclesiastical Preferment,” RES, ii (1926), 1–17. It is doubtful that Queen Anne blocked Swift's advancement in the Church.

23 Her portrait is the frontispiece for A Help, edition cited above.

24 Bertrand A. Goldgar, The Curse of Party: Swift's Relations with Addison and Steele (Lincoln, Neb., 1961), pp. 46–47.

25 Marlborough's well-known avarice, Godolphin's love for gambling, Somer's weakness for women, Wharton's selling of offices, etc. See Morgan, pp. 47, 53, 227, 371, et passim.

26 See Quintana, The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift (Oxford, 1953), p. 124.

27 See Scudi, op. cit.