Swift and the Moderns

Deep immersion in the satirical writings of Jonathan Swift, whose bleak representations of the human animal feel profoundly modern despite Swift’s wishful alignment with a world of the classics besieged by modernity.  The initial sweep of the class brings to life the battle between ancient and modern learning that raged in Europe c. 1700 by way of prose satires including “The Battel of the Books,” “An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity” and the indescribable text – arguably the most interesting and complex thing written in English in the entire eighteenth century – A Tale of a Tub. Additional readings include selections from Epicurus, Lucretius, Hobbes, Descartes, Rochester, Pope, La Mettrie. The middle third of the class centers Swift’s best-known book-length satire, Gulliver’s Travels, attending closely the formal workings of irony and the satirical mode but also contextualizing Swift’s writing with selections from Thucydides, Montaigne, Rousseau, Gibbon, Freud, Orwell, Bataille, Blanchot, Deleuze, Scarry. The final third, an exploration of Swift’s twentieth-century legacies, begins with “A Modest Proposal” and related texts by Defoe and Malthus, then focuses on language, violence and representation in works by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Primo Levi, Kurt Vonnegut and W. G. Sebald. No prerequisites other than a commitment to reading Swift seriously, writing short frequent assignments and making yourself wholly intellectually and emotionally present in class.