Jonathan Swift

The History of Literature

Jacke Wilson

History, Books, Arts

4.6 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2019

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was a man who loved ciphers and a cipher of a man, an Anglo-Irishman who claimed not to like Ireland but became one of its greatest champions. He was viewed as an oddity even by the friends who knew him well and admired him most. And yet, in spite of his obscure origins and curious personal hangups, he became famous for works like Gulliver's Travels, A Tale of a Tub, and A Modest Proposal, in which his clear and incisive prose skewered institutions, authority figures, and conventional wisdom. A master of sustained irony and deft political satire, he's been read and admired by high-minded critics and general audiences for three centuries. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to [email protected]. Music Credits: “Quirky Dog" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podglamorate Network and LIT Hub Radio.
0:07.0	Hello. He was a man who loved Cyphers and a cipher of a man, an Anglo Irishman who claimed not to like Ireland, but became one of its greatest champions.
0:20.0	His knowing humour on the page was accompanied by some curious behavior in his personal life.
0:26.0	If all you did was read his biography, you might think, well, here's a figure who's so ridiculous,
0:31.0	so full of contradiction, so full of strangeness, such a grand figure whose personality
0:36.8	is filled with such aspects of tininess, someone should satirize him. But instead instead he was one of the greatest and most famous satirists of all time.
0:48.0	The author of Gulliver's Travels and a modest proposal, two works that readers today still encounter as children and adults,
0:55.2	three centuries after they were written. His name, of course, was Jonathan Swift,
0:59.9	and his swiftian style is one we still enjoy and admire.
1:04.0	Who was Jonathan Swift? Why was he so strange?
1:08.0	We'll have all that today on the history of literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast everyone. I'm Jack Wilson. Jonathan Jonathan Swift I did not know what to expect
1:35.2	when I started the research on this one I was excited for a few reasons
1:38.5	Cullover's travels for one anyone who writes a work like that is worth digging into.
1:45.0	The history of literature has a few classics like that, Robinson Caruso, Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein,
1:52.0	the Three Musketeers, works that sort of transcend their time and become
1:57.0	children's classics, movies, adaptations, source material for others.
2:02.0	They become literary archetypes.
2:05.0	Dr Johnson, and here's another reason why I was excited, my hero.
2:10.0	Dr Johnson wrote about Swift, which is always a treat for me.
2:13.2	I'll have plenty of good quotes from Dr Johnson in here.
2:16.9	He makes me laugh as much as any author, I think.
2:20.4	I can't wait for the Dr Johnson episode,
	...

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