Assignment: paper 102 (. Literature of the Neo - Classical Period)

Assignment writing: Paper no 102 (Literature of the Neo - Classical Period)

This blog is Assignment writing on paper 102 ( Literature of the Neo - classical period) assigned by Professor, Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Name: Nidhi Dave

Paper: Neo - Classical Period

Roll no: 16

Enrollment no: 4069206420210005

Email ID: davenidhi05@gmail.com

Batch: 2021- 23( M.A. Sem - 1)

Submitted to: Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

👉A Tale of a Tub as Satire

 

Jonathan Swift's Tale of the Tub is a brilliant failure. It is a prose satire intended as a defence of the Anglican church, but it was widely interpreted by contemporary readers as an attack on all religion. At the time of writing it, Swift was a junior Anglican clergyman hoping for substantial preferment in the Church. The appearance of the Tale, and its assumed message, was a serious obstacle to his promotion.

A Tale of a Tub was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift, composed between 1694 and 1697 and published in 1704. It is probably his most difficult satire, and possibly his most masterful. The Tale is a prose parody which is divided up into sections of " digression" and "tale." The "tale" presents a consistent satire of religious excess, while the digressions are a series of parodies of contemporary writing in literature, politics, theology, Biblical exegesis, and medicine. The overarching parody is of enthusiasm, pride, and credulity.A Tale of a Tub was the book that launched Jonathan Swift on his career as a satirist, paving the way for better-known works such as Gulliver's Travels (1726) and "A Modest Proposal" (1729).

👉 In satire, authors critique social issues using literary strategies:

📌 Sarcasm 

📌Hyperbole

📌 Extended

📌Symbolism

📌Humor

➡️Sarcasm communicates contempt for the subject at hand. As a result, readers must often reverse the author's words to determine meaning. In A Tale of a Tub, the narrator expresses great admiration for the brothers' ingenuity in getting around their father's wishes. This admiration is insincere, however. The narrator sarcastically mocks their foolishness in trying to find loopholes to God's revealed will.

➡️Hyperbole radically exaggerates existing situations to show innate ridiculousness or weakness. The narrator uses hyperbole throughout his tale, describing preachers so fiery that they can light their own way home at night and so full of wind that they puff up like balloons.

➡️Extended analogies indirectly draw attention to flawed situations. The narrator uses this technique when he likens the Bible to the will of a father who knows what is best for his children but who is overruled or ignored by his selfish heirs.

➡️Symbolism indirectly represents social, religious, and political issues. This strategy allows satirists to protect themselves with indirection from backlash, especially if they are criticizing powerful institutions. It may also make their critiques more universal. The narrator uses the overarching symbol of a set of coats to describe Christianity and show the many "alterations" it has undergone. Although his critique applies specifically to the extremes of Catholicism and Dissent, the symbolism in A Tale of a Tub is general enough to apply to any deeply entrenched institution and any (over)zealous group of reformers.

➡️Humor criticizes society to stimulate thought and action. The narrator's caricatures of Peter and Jack (Catholicism and Dissent, respectively) are broadly comical, and the effect is heightened by the characters' self-righteousness. Peter proclaims himself emperor and does not realise that most people are mocking his title and not respecting it. Jack's belligerent preaching and disheveled appearance lead listeners to think he has gone mad.

👉Parody and Allegory

addition to the 'digressions' that form a satire on modern learning and print culture, A Tale of a Tub's more obvious satire is that on abuses in religion. The satire works through the allegory of the three brothers: Martin, Peter, and Jack. Martin symbolizes the Anglican Church (from Martin Luther); Peter symbolizes the Roman Catholic Church; and Jack (from John Calvin) symbolizes the Dissenters. Their father leaves each brother a coat as a legacy, with strict orders that the coats are on no account to be altered. The sons gradually disobey his injunction, finding excuses for adding shoulder knots or gold lace, according to the prevailing fashion. Martin and Jack quarrel with the arrogant Peter (the Reformation), and then with each other (the split between Anglicanism and Puritanism), and then separate. As we might expect, Martin is by far the most moderate of the three, and his speech in section six is by the sanest thing anyone has to say in the Tale.

Both parody and allegory work by implicitly, or explicitly, comparing one sort of book with another. As a broad generalisation, they are concerned with intertextual relationships, and how you can use one text to invoke or critique another. But the distinction is that allegory teaches its readers to see beyond appearance to recognise truth, while parody teaches its readers to see beyond appearance to recognise error.

👉Nature of the Satire

Swift's targets in the Tale included indexers, note-makers, and, above all, people who saw "dark matter" in books. He attacks criticism generally, and he appeared to be delighted by the fact that one of his enemies, William Wotton, had offered to explain the Tale in an "answer" to the book and that one of the men he had explicitly attacked, Curll, had offered to explain the book to the public. In the fifth edition of the book in 1705, Swift provided an apparatus to the work that incorporated Wotton's explanations and Swift's narrator's own notes as well. The notes appear to occasionally provide genuine information and just as often to mislead, and William Wotton's name, a defender of the Moderns, was appended to a number of notes. This allows Swift to make the commentary part of the satire itself, as well as to elevate his narrator to the level of self-critic.

It is hard to say what the Tale's satire is about, since it is about any number of things. It is most consistent in attacking misreading of all sorts. Both in the narrative sections and the digressions, the single human flaw that underlies all the follies Swift attacks is over-figurative and reading, both of the Bible and of poetry and political prose. The narrator is seeking hidden knowledge, mechanical operations of things spiritual, spiritual qualities to thongs physical, and alternate readings of everythin 

Within the "tale" sections of the book, Peter, Martin, and Jack fall into bad company (becoming the official religion of the Roman empire) and begin altering their coats (faith) by adding ornaments. They then begin relying on Peter to be the arbitrator of the will, and he begins to rule by authority (he remembered the handyman saying that he once heard the father say that it was alright to put on more ornaments), until such a time that Jack rebels against the rule of Peter. Jack begins to read the will (the Bible) overly literally. He rips the coat to shreds to try to restore the original state of the garment (equivalent of the "primitive Christianity" sought by dissenters). He begins to rely only upon "inner illumination" for guidance and thus walks around with his eyes closed, after swallowing candle snuffs. Eventually, Peter and Jack begin to resemble one another, and only Martin is left with a coat that is at all like the original.

An important factor in the reception of Swift's work is that the narrator of the work is an extremist in every direction. Consequently, he can no more construct a sound allegory than he can finish his digressions without losing control (eventually confessing that he is insane). For a Church of England reader, the allegory of the brothers provides small comfort. Martin has a corrupted faith, one full of holes and still with ornaments on it. His only virtue is that he avoids the excesses of his brothers, but the original faith is lost to him. Readers of the Tale have picked up on this unsatisfactory resolution to both "parts" of the book, and A Tale of a Tub has often been offered up as evidence of Swift's misanthropy.

Additionally, Swift's satire is relatively unique in that he offers no resolutions. While he ridicules any number of foolish habits, he never offers the reader a positive set of values to embrace. While this type of satire became more common as people imitated Swift, later, Swift is quite unusual in offering the readers no way out. He does not persuade to any position, but he does persuade readers from an assortment of positions. This is one of the qualities that has made the Tale Swift's least read major work.

The "tale" presents a consistent satire of religious excess, while the digressions are a series of parodies of contemporary writing in literature, politics, theology, Biblical exegesis, and medicine. The overarching parody is of enthusiasm, pride, and credulity. At the time it was written, politics and religion were still closely linked in England, and the religious and political aspects of the satire can often hardly be separated. "The work made Swift notorious, and was widely misunderstood, especially by Queen Anne herself who mistook its purpose for profanity." It "effectively disbarred its author from proper preferment within the church", but is considered one of Swift's best allegories, even by himself. It was enormously popular, but Swift believed it damaged his prospect of advancement in the Church of England.

Words Count: 1,500

Reference:

https://writersinspire.org/content/jonathan-swift-tale-tub

https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/a/A_Tale_of_a_Tub.htm

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TgPPTiqxxN6E6Ajj_wsbaN_n4Zztvu4ScigcVaL5nBs/edit?usp=drivesdk