Jonathan Swift [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Our selection is made from Swift's 150 or so separate prose works, some 280 poems, and over 750 known letters. With only two exceptions, all the works are given complete. To allow representation with some solidity of an active writing career of half a century spanning the period from the last decade of the seventeenth century to the fourth of the eighteenth, Gulliver's Travels is omitted as being easily available elsewhere. The big collections of Swift's works, with some basis it is true in his own publishing practice, have perpetuated a series of editorial judgements which over the years interfered with the critical appreciation of his ouvre. The difficulty stems from the custom of classifying his writings, placing them in groups according to ostensible subject-matter or apparent genre. The arrangement of the present selection is chronological and is meant, by fruitful juxtaposition, to offer a new and clearer awareness of the unity as well as the complexity of Swift's vision, indicating the powerful bonds between disparate pieces. The poems are not segregated, though they may easily be read as a group by reference to the Contents (see p. vii). Basic information about the circumstances, politics, and ideas that prompted individual pieces is given in the Notes. A Biographical Index of the contemporaries he mentions is also provided for handy reference in reading literature so precisely aimed in the first instance at a highly self-conscious, perceptive, and homogeneous audience. The Glossary lists words whose meaning may now be obscure and translates or paraphrases foreign or difficult phrases. The Chronology sets out the principal events in Swift's public life (in lieu of a biographical sketch), and lists some of his own publications as well as the dates of the appearance of contemporary books which contribute to an understanding of his works. The scope of this series precluded the provision for each work selected of a rationale of the text printed in this volume. Jonathan Swift's life, character, and writing are distinguished not merely by the ilormal tensions and contrasts of human experience, but by the powerful clash of violently opposed forces. Further, in his case at least, it has always been not only difficult, but finally impossible, to read the author out of the works and treat the texts as free-standing objects, uncomplicated by authorial intention, biographical complexities, or historical relationships. F. R. Leavis in his essay on 'The Irony of Swift' {The Common Pursuit, 1952) very properly seeks to clear his discussion