Almanac of Story Tellers: Jonathan Swift

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books 

Today is the story of Nov. 30th

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    It is the 334th day of the year, leaving 31 days remaining in 2022. 

   

    On this date in 1667, the satirist Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin.

    He told his stories with pointed wit, playful humor, and sometime harsh charms. His writing was sophisticated and exuded rational thought, making his parodies all the more brilliant. He attacked irrational behavior with even more absurd, if deadpan, responses.

    Most of his works were published anonymously, and it became a great parlor game of the day to guess the actual writer -- although it was generally known that Swift was the real author.

    He started his career as a secretary and budding poet. He was ordained as an Anglican priest. But his writings took off when he turned his hand toward satire.

    His first work in that category was A Tale of a Tub, which he wrote in the mid 1690s and published in 1704. A tale of three brothers seeking a loophole in their father's will, it's a take on the three main branches of Western Christianity. It was enormously popular during its time, taking on the excesses of religion, politics, medicine, and writers.

    Drapier's Letters was a series of pamphlets that attacked the idea of privately minting copper coins in Ireland by portraying Ireland as politically independent of England. A Modest Proposal was a suggestion that England solve its hunger problem and Ireland's perceived overpopulation problems by dining on Irish children.

    But his major work was Gulliver's Travels. Exactly when it was written is unknown, although it is believed to have been during the 1720s. It was published in October 1726.

    It's a wide-ranging tale of voyages to fantastical lands, which comments on the individual against society, the corruption of government and science, the petty differences between religions, and whether humans are inherently corrupt or simply become so over time.

    Swift died in 1745.