Jonathan Swift
Dublin's savage satirist
Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist of the early eighteenth century, best known for *Gulliver's Travels* and "A Modest Proposal." His name has become shorthand for savage, ironical satire that exposes human folly and institutional corruption.
When someone's writing is described as Swiftian, it suggests a biting wit that uses absurdity to make serious political or social points.
Era prioritizing reason over dogma
- GeorgianOf four kings' era
- Queen AnneEnglish monarch, furniture period
- Restoration1660s monarchical revival
- Age of ReasonEighteenth-century intellectual awakening
neoclassicism · coffeehouse culture · patronage · pamphleteer · Whig · Tory · Jacobite · Alexander Pope
Author of short prose
- pamphleteerWriter of political tracts
- DeanMasculine given name
- clergymanOrdained religious leader
- polemicistAggressive debate writer
humorist · poet · political writer · Anglican · misanthrope · pseudonym · canonical · influence
Meaning opposite to words
- parodySatirical imitation
- witClever, inventive humor
- mockeryScornful ridicule or travesty
- lampoonHarsh public mockery
social commentary · polemic · caricature · allegory · ridicule · cynicism · hyperbole · understatement
Irish capital city
- St. Patrick's CathedralFamous Manhattan Catholic church
- DeanMasculine given name
- Anglo-IrishBritish roots, Irish soil
- Irish nationalismPursuit of self-governance
colonialism · Stella · Vanessa · Irish independence · British rule · Trinity College · poverty · famine
- A Modest ProposalSavage indignation disguised as economics
- LilliputiansExtremely small beings
- YahoosCrude, uncultured people
- proseUnversified language
allegory · travel narrative · political pamphlet · religious satire · epistolary
Enlightenment
Era prioritizing reason over dogma
- GeorgianOf four kings' era
- Queen AnneEnglish monarch, furniture period
- Restoration1660s monarchical revival
Age of Reason · neoclassicism · coffeehouse culture · patronage · pamphleteer · Whig · Tory · Jacobite · Alexander Pope · Daniel Defoe
essayist
Author of short prose
- pamphleteerWriter of political tracts
- DeanMasculine given name
- clergymanOrdained religious leader
polemicist · humorist · poet · political writer · Anglican · misanthrope · pseudonym · canonical · influence
irony
Meaning opposite to words
lampoon · social commentary · polemic · caricature · allegory · ridicule · cynicism · hyperbole · understatement · sardonic
Dublin
Irish capital city
- St. Patrick's CathedralFamous Manhattan Catholic church
- DeanMasculine given name
- Anglo-IrishBritish roots, Irish soil
Irish nationalism · colonialism · Stella · Vanessa · Irish independence · British rule · Trinity College · poverty · famine
Gulliver's Travels
- A Modest ProposalSavage indignation disguised as economics
- LilliputiansExtremely small beings
- YahoosCrude, uncultured people
prose · allegory · travel narrative · political pamphlet · religious satire · epistolary
- early literatureessay, novel, pamphlet, early novels, treatise
- Irish WritersJames Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw
- AuthorsShakespeare, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald
- British LiteratureShakespeare, Dickens, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Austen
- 1700sMozart, Voltaire, colonial period, French Revolution, William III
- Authors JJ.R.R. Tolkien, Jane Austen, John Steinbeck, James Patterson, John Grisham
Jonathan SwiftSamuel Richardson
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · Ralph Waldo Emerson · sentimentalist · William Wordsworth · Walt Whitman
Jonathan SwiftJean-Jacques Rousseau
Ralph Waldo Emerson · Walt Whitman · humanist · optimist · Leibniz
Jonathan SwiftSamuel Richardson
Daniel Defoe · novelist · Jane Austen · George Eliot · Leo Tolstoy