Knaves Fools And Heroes Jonathan Swifts Ethics

Abstracts of dissertations and monographs in microform.

Jonathan Swift: Irish Blow-in covers the arc of the first half of Jonathan Swift’s life, offering fresh details of the contentment and exuberance of his childhood, of the support he received from his grandmother, of his striking affection for Esther Johnson from the time she was ten years old (his pet name for her in her twenties was “saucebox”), of his precocious entry into English politics with his Contests and Dissensions pamphlet, of his brilliant and much misunderstood Tale of a Tub, and of his naive determination to do well both as a vicar of the small parish of Laracor in Ireland and as a writer for the Tory administration trying to pull England out of debt by ending the war England was engaged in with France. I do not share with past biographers the sense that Swift had a deprived childhood. I do not share the suspicion that most of Swift’s enmities were politically motivated. I do not feel critical of him because he was often fastidious with his money. I do not think he was insincere about his religious faith. His pride, his sexual interests, his often shocking or uninhibited language, his instinct for revenge – emphasized by many previous biographers – were all fundamental elements of his being, but elements that he either used for rhetorical effect, or that he tried to keep in check, and that he felt that religion helped him to keep in check. Swift had as firm a conviction as did Freud that we are born with wayward tendencies; unlike Freud, though, he saw both religion and civil society as necessary and helpful checks on those wayward tendencies, and he (frequently, but certainly not always) acknowledged that he shared those tendencies with the rest of us. This biography, in two books, Jonathan Swift: Irish Blow-in and Jonathan Swift: Our Dean, will differ from most literary biographies in that it does not aim to show how Swift’s life illuminates his writings, but rather how and why Swift wrote in order to live the life he wanted to live. I have liberally quoted Swift’s own words in this biography because his inventive expression of ideas, both in his public works and in his private letters, was what has made him a unique and compelling figure in the history of literature. I hope in these two books to come closer than past biographies to capturing how it felt to Swift himself to live his life. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

This bibliography brings together information on over 4,000 dissertations that deal wholly or in part with Irish writers and Anglo-Irish literature. Included are works from more than 350 universities and from 28 different countries, a scope of material that has not been collected in one place before. The dissertation subjects include not only poets, novelists, and dramatists, but also critics, diarists, scholars, historians, and journalists. In all, 193 authors are studied, whose lives cover the years from 1600 to the present. The book, which supersedes all previously published volumes on this subject, lists each entry under the author as subject, rather than under a topical, genre, or subject designation. Because multiple-subject entries are listed under first mentioned author, a complete see-also reference section has been included to direct users to all entries related to each author. The volume also includes a section on general and topical studies, as well as a subject index. This book will be an important reference for courses in English literature, Irish studies, and theater and drama, and an important addition to most university and college libraries.

Includes entries for maps and atlases

This volume, covering entries from "Shaftesbury, Third Earl of" to "Zubiri, Xavier," presents articles on Eastern and Western philosophies, medical and scientific ethics, the Holocaust, terrorism, censorship, biographical entries, and much more.