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3 books match the query '1667-1745'
Imagining Monsters
Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-Century EnglandDennis Todd
University of Chicago Press, 1995
Mary Toft's outrageous claim was accepted because of a common belief that the imagination of a pregnant woman could deform her fetus, creating a monster within her. Drawing on largely unexamined material from medicine, embryology, philosophy, and popular "monster" exhibitions, Todd shows that such ideas about monstrous births expressed a fear central to scientific, literary, and philosophical thinking: that the imagination could transgress the barrier between mind and body.
In his analysis of the Toft case, Todd exposes deep anxieties about the threat this transgressive imagination posed to the idea of the self as stable, coherent, and autonomous. Major works of Pope and Swift reveal that they, too, were concerned with these issues, and Imagining Monsters provides detailed discussions of Gulliver's Travels and The Dunciad illustrating how these writers used images of monstrosity to explore the problematic nature of human identity. It also includes a provocative analysis of Pope's later work that takes into account his physical deformity and his need to defend himself in a society that linked a deformed body with a deformed character.
The Converting Imagination
Linguistic Theory and Swift's Satiric ProseMarilyn Francus
Southern Illinois University Press, 1994
By illuminating Jonathan Swift’s fascination with language, Marilyn Francus shows how the linguistic questions posed by his work are at the forefront of twentieth-century literary criticism: What constitutes meaning in language? How do people respond to language? Who has (or should have) authority over language? Is linguistic value synonymous with literary value?
Francus starts with a detailed analysis of Swift’s linguistic education, which straddled a radical transition in linguistic thought, and its effect on his prose. This compelling beginning includes sometimes surprising historical information about the teaching and learning of linguistics and language theory in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Swift’s academic studies reflected the traditional universalist view that seeks an Adamic language to reverse the fragmentation of Babel and achieve epistemological unity. But Swift’s tutor also exposed him to the contemporary linguistics of the scientific societies and of John Locke, who argued that the assignment of linguistic meaning is arbitrary and subjective, capturing an individual’s understanding at a particular instant. These competing theories, Francus maintains, help explain the Irish writer’s conflicting inclinations toward both linguistic order and freewheeling creativity.
To develop a complete vision of Swiftian linguistics, Francus focuses on A Tale of a Tub as the archetypal linguistic text in the Swift canon, but she also includes evidence from his other famous works, including Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal, Journal to Stella, and The Bickerstaff Papers, as well as from his lesser known religious and political tracts and his correspondence. In addition, Francus draws on the relevant work of contemporary linguists (such as Wilkins, Watts, Dyche, and Stackhouse), philosophers (Hobbes and Locke), and authors (including Temple, Sprat, Dryden, Pope, Addison, and Defoe).
Francus concludes that Swift occupies a pivotal place in literary history: his conscious emphasis on textuality and extended linguistic play anticipates not only the future of satiric prose but the modern novel as well.
The Last Amateur
Jonathan Swift, Edward Said, and the Profession of LiteratureHelen Deutsch
University of Chicago Press, 2026
Joining the unfinished conversation between the satirist Jonathan Swift and the critic Edward Said, The Last Amateur argues for the transformative potential of literature.
What does “Swiftian” mean to you? For many, the name is synonymous with ingenious satire and an acid, clarifying mix of decorum and outrage. Jonathan Swift was, of course, the author of not only Gulliver’s Travels but also A Modest Proposal, which the columnist Gene Lyons recently called “perhaps the most penetrating anti-racist essay in the English language.” Small wonder, then, that the Anglo-Irish satirist was a lifelong inspiration to the great Palestinian American critic Edward Said, who for many years worked on an unfinished book about Swift and cultivated a Swiftian voice across his career.
Helen Deutsch’s highly personal book explores what Said’s love of Swift—and hers of both—tells us about not only these authors but also the powers of criticism itself. The Last Amateur is about how one comes to love one writer through another. Deutsch scrutinizes Said in relationship to Swift to raise questions of her own about the profession of literary studies. At a time when many in the field have lost faith in critique, Deutsch shows how passion and a refusal of professional propriety—the hallmarks of the amateur—can enliven critique again.
What, then, does it mean to be a Swiftian? The Swiftian hears Swift’s animus and uses it as an incentive for their own freedom of thought. Said was a Swiftian because the experience of reading Swift freed him to speak out, to have something serious to say. Deutsch’s revelatory book is an exercise in hearing Swift’s voice and speaking in her own.