Title: Swift’s Satires on Modernism
Description: "More than three centuries since their first publication, Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub, 'The Battle of the Books, ' 'The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, ' and An Argument against Abolishing Christianity remain striking, prescient, and still-relevant challenges to Modern commitments to inwardness, reflection, and spiritualism. In this lively and engaging study - grounded in the intellectual and historical currents of Swift's time, with an eye on the implications for the present day - G. Douglas Atkins brings forty-plus years of scholarly and critical experience to bear on some of the greatest satires ever written. The study reveals new contexts for understanding Swift's satires, including post-Reformation reading practices and the development of the modern personal essay. This book revisits, from fresh perspectives, the late seventeenth-century version of the perennial warfare between Ancients and Moderns, then often instanced as 'the battle of the books.'"--Publisher's website.
Subjects: Swift, jonathan, 1667-1745, Satire, english, history and criticism, Modernism (literature), Criticism and interpretation, English Satire, History and criticism, Engelsk satir, Historia, LITERARY CRITICISM, European, English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800, Literature