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JONATHAN SWIFT
(1667-1745)
J. Swift was born in Dublin but he came from an English family. He studied at a college in Dublin. At the age of 21 Swift went to England and became a secretary of a diplomat Temple. His learning and erudition won him great respect at Oxford where Swift in 1692 took his degree as Master of Arts.
In 1704, Swift wrote his immortal political satire 'Tale of a Tub'. It is an allegory in which Swift criticizes various forms of religion and bitterly exposes religious dogmas and superstitions. Different forms of Christian doctrines, theories are compared to rotten tubs which help the whale-hunters divert the attention of the whales (i.e. people) the easier to kill them.
Swift's life in Ireland gave him an intimate knowledge of the miserable condition of the people. A desire to serve Ireland became one of his ruling passions. He wrote much and burnt most of what he wrote.
In 1716, Swift's greatest work 'Gulliver's Travels' made its appearance. Swift portrays contemporary life satirically. It contains the adventures of a ship surgeon as told by him and is divided into four parts of voyages.
The first part contains an account of Lilliput and its little people. They are less than six inches high. Here the satire is directed to the meanness and conventionality of the morality of politicians and statesmen.
The second part tells of Brobdignag and its giants, they are sixty feet in height. The giants live a simple Utopian life.
The third part tells about Laputa, a flying island. Ladago is a city with an absurd academy and so on. Glubbdubdrib, and Ireland of magicians, and Luggnagg, another island where wretched people continue living.
The fourth part brings Gulliver to the country of the Honyhnhums, where the intelligent creatures are horses, and all the human beings (Yahoos) monsters are reduced to the level of brutes. It is in describing these Yahoos that Swift shows how bitterly he hated society vices. He decides that horses are clever and more decent creatures than men. Swift penetrated into the depths and saw the social corruption at its worst.
Swift died in Dublin in 1745. Bourgeois critics describe Swift as a misanthrope and a skeptic. Swift hated all kinds of oppression – political, economic, and religious; but he loved people which found expression in his upholding the defense of the Irish people in their struggle for freedom.