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Swift's Tale of a Tub: An Essay in Problems of Structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert C. Elliott
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Extract

One comes from a reading of A Tale of a Tub with two dominant impressions: that it is an extraordinarily brilliant work and that it is extraordinarily complex. One recalls Boswell's testimony that Dr. Johnson could hardly believe Swift had written the Tale: “it has so much more thinking, more power, more colour, than any of the works which are indisputably his.” And again: “there is in it such a vigour of mind, such a swarm of thoughts, so much of nature, and art, and life,” as opposed, say, to Gulliver's Travels, where (in one of Johnson's most prejudiced comments), “once you have thought of big men and little men, it is very easy to do all the rest.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , June 1951 , pp. 441 - 455
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1951

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References

Note 1 in page 441 Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill (New York, n.d.), v, 49; ii, 364–365.

Note 2 in page 441 The Restoration and Eighteenth Century, Vol. iii of A Literary History of England, ed. Albert C. Baugh (New York, 1948), pp. 859, 868–869.

Note 3 in page 442 A Tale of a Tub, ed. A. C. Guthkelch and D. Nichol Smith (Oxford, 1920), p. 209. This edition is the source of all references to the Tale.

Note 4 in page 442 The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift (New York, 1936), pp. 85–96. For another approach to the problem of thematic unity, see Emile Pons, Swift: les années de jeunesse et le “Conte du tonneau” (Strasbourg and London, 1925), particularly the doctrine of l'esthèto-morpkisme, pp. 308 ff.

Note 5 in page 443 See the Preface to Roderick Hudson in The Art of the Novel, ed. Richard P. Blackmur (New York, 1934), p. 15.

Note 6 in page 443 Ibid., p. xviii.

Note 7 in page 444 I omit the Apology, which is a relatively straightforward defense of the Tale and not properly part of it. The Apology was added to the Tale in the 5th ed. (1710).

Note 8 in page 446 See the Miller's Prologue, Unes 3173–75, and Book v of Troilus and Crysede, passim.

Note 9 in page 449 The passage is further complicated by its entangièment in Swift's ambiguous attitude toward the efficacy of satire. While Pope can hail satire: “O sacred Weapon, left for Truth's defense/Sole dread of Folly, Vice, and Insolence,” it is characteristic of Swift that he should doubt the efficacy of his own instrument. For another example of his attitude, see Swift's Preface to the Battle of the Books. The couplet from Pope occurs in “Epilogue to The Satires. Dialogue n,” lines 212–213.

Note 10 in page 449 James L. Clifford advances the interesting hypothesis that the Tale, The Battle of the Books, and The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit should be considered as one work, the Mechanical Operation fittingly coming last in order as the true climax of the whole. Certainly there is close affinity in subject matter among the three pieces. But if one accepts my analysis of the structure of the Tale, then one must, I suppose, reject Clifford's suggestion; for the “I” of the Tale has little in common with either the “I” of the Battle or the “I” of the Fragment. The ostensible writer of the Battle clearly favors the Ancients; he is no ingénu. The “I” of the Fragment displays ingénti-like qualities, particularly in the first few paragraphs, but these are almost completely abandoned as Swift gets into his subject proper. Similar as the three pieces are in some respects, “point of view” is handled quite differently in each. For Clifford's suggestion, see “Swift's Mechanical Operation of the Spirit,” in Pope and his Contemporaries: Essays Presented to George Sherburn, ed. J. L. Clifford and L. A. Landa (Oxford, 1949), pp. 135–146.

Note 11 in page 450 The following quotations are a continuation.

Note 12 in page 451 “The Irony of Swift,” in Determinations, ed. F. R. Leavis (London, 1934), pp. 96–97.

Note 13 in page 453 Pons has remarked the relationship of this passage to the Digression on Madness: Swift, p. 382.

Note 14 in page 454 Determinations, p. 101.

Note 15 in page 454 Mind of Swift, p. 96.

Note 15 in page 454 See The Praise of Folly, trans. Hoyt H. Hudson (Princeton, 1941), pp. 40–41.