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Swift's “Project”: Tract or Travesty?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Phillip Harth ,
Leland D. Peterson ,
Phillip Harth  and
Leland D. Peterson
Phillip Harth
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
Leland D. Peterson
Affiliation:
Old Dominion College
Phillip Harth
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
Leland D. Peterson
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

In a recent article, “Swift's Project: A Religious and Political Satire” (PMLA, LXXII, March 1967, 54–63), Leland D. Peterson argues that Swift's Project for the Advancement of Religion, and the Reformation of Manners (1709) cannot be taken as a serious “reformation tract.” In his view, what Swift appears to be recommending in the Project is as outrageous in its own way as his more famous project in A Modest Proposal and we must therefore assume that in the earlier piece, as in the later, Swift's pose is ironic, his persona unsympathetic, and his purpose satirical. Peterson concludes by suggesting that “the main targets of satire in the Project are reformers and reforming societies, projectors, nominal Christianity, and the Whig Junto” (p. 58).

Type
Notes, Documents, and Critical Comment
Information
PMLA , Volume 84 , Issue 2 , March 1969 , pp. 336 - 343
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1969

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References

1 Prose Works, ed. Herbert Davis, ii (Oxford, 1957), 45. Subsequent references are parenthetical.

2 Works (London, 1820), i, 421–422.

3 Prose Works, ii, 27.

4 The Satires of Horace (Cambridge, Eng., 1966), p. 209.