Swift and Science [electronic resource] : The Satire, Politics and Theology of Natural Knowledge, 1690-1730 /
Lynall, G.author.
It is thought that Swift was opposed to the new science that heralded the beginning of the modern age, but this book interrogates that assumption, tracing the theological, political, and socio-cultural resonances of scientific knowledge in the early eighteenth century, and considering what they can reveal about Swift's imagination.
Description based upon print version of record.
Cover; Contents; List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; Introduction: Altitudes of Authority; 1 Meditations and Mechanisms: Swift and Robert Boyle's Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects; Talking Flowers; Topsy-turvy Trees; Tritical Texts and Contemptible Insects; Corpuscular Clothes; Curious Engines; 2 Sinking the 'Spider's Cittadel': The Battel of the Books and Thomas Burnet's 'Philosophical Romance' of the Earth; Spinning Sacred Theories; The 'Wandring Bee' Alights; Weaving Webs of Allegory; 3 Newtonian Battels with Rising Stars and Wheeling Moons
Bentley 'the New and Rising-Star'Centers, Tombs and Moons; The Politics and Theology of 'Dilating on Matter and Motion'; 'Bantring' with 'Newton's Mathematicks'; 4 Laputian Newtons: Science, the Wood's Halfpence Affair and Gulliver's Travels; Kings of Inattention; Newton, Wood and the Drapier; 'Taylor', Astrologer and 'Workman in the Mint'; The Occasion of Lindalino; 5 Socinians and Queens: Samuel Clarke and 'Directions for a Birthday Song'; Socinians and Queens; Beams and Blows; Hell and Hanover; Afterword; Notes; Bibliography; Index
Includes bibliographical references and index.
It is thought that Swift was opposed to the new science that heralded the beginning of the modern age, but this book interrogates that assumption, tracing the theological, political, and socio-cultural resonances of scientific knowledge in the early eighteenth century, and considering what they can reveal about Swift's imagination.
Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745
British literature.
Literature, Modern—18th century.
Literature, Modern.
Literature—Philosophy.
Culture—Study and teaching.
Literature—History and criticism.
British and Irish Literature.
Eighteenth-Century Literature.
Early Modern/Renaissance Literature.
Literary Theory.
Cultural Theory.
Literary History.