Description
Swift and History
Politics and the English Past
Author: Marshall Ashley
This book explores the importance of history to Jonathan Swift through close reading of his historical, polemical and satirical writings.
Language: EnglishApproximative price 32.87 €
In Print (Delivery period: 14 days).
Add to cart the print on demand of Marshall Ashley
Swift and History
Publication date: 08-2017
Support: Print on demand
Publication date: 08-2017
Support: Print on demand
Approximative price 95.31 €
In Print (Delivery period: 14 days).
Add to cart the print on demand of Marshall Ashley
Swift and History
Publication date: 04-2015
Support: Print on demand
Publication date: 04-2015
Support: Print on demand
Description
/li>Contents
/li>Biography
/li>
Swift has been said to have little interest in history; his attempts to write it have been disparaged and his desire to become Historiographer Royal ridiculed. Ashley Marshall argues that history mattered enormously to Swift. He read a vast amount of history and uses historical examples copiously in his own works. This study traces Swift's classical and modern historiographical inheritance; analyses his unsuccessful attempt to write a history of England; and offers radical re-reading of his History of the Four Last Years of the Queen. A systematic analysis of Swift's view of 'authority' is highly revealing. His attitudes toward power and authority, sovereigns' and subjects' rights, parliamentary representation, and succession are reflected in his lifelong engagement with and pervasive use of the past. Studying Swift and history enables a deeper understanding of his authoritarian and historiographically Tory outlook - and how it changed when Swift's party fell from power in 1714.
Introduction; 1. Swift and the historians, ancient and modern; 2. Swift, Temple, and the history of England; 3. The uses of history in Swiftian satire and polemic; 4. 'Swift's rhapsodical Tory-book': the aims and motives of The History of the Four Last Years of the Queen; 5. Swift and authority; Conclusion: Swift's Tory historiography; Bibliography.
Ashley Marshall is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, and is the author of The Practice of Satire in England, 1658–1770 (2013).
© 2024 LAVOISIER S.A.S.