Swift and Pope: Satirists in Dialogue - Hardcover

Griffin, Dustin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521761239 ISBN 13: 9780521761239

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2010

Synopsis

Swift and Pope were lifelong friends and fellow satirists with shared literary sensibilities. But there were significant differences - demographic, psychological, and literary - between them: an Anglican and a Roman Catholic, an Irishman and an Englishman, one deeply committed to politically engaged poetry, and the other reluctant to engage in partisanship and inclined to distinguish poetry from politics. In this book, Dustin Griffin argues that we need to pay more attention to those differences, which both authors recognised and discussed. Their letters, poems, and satires can be read as stages in an ongoing conversation or satiric dialogue: each often wrote for the other, sometimes addressing him directly, sometimes emulating or imitating. In some sense, each was constantly replying to the other. From their lifelong dialogue emerges not only the extraordinary affection and admiration they felt for each other, but also the occasional irritation and resentment that kept them both together and apart.

About this title

Review:

'... one of the most useful and lucid critical monographs I have encountered in the last half-decade ...' Eighteenth-Century Studies

'Griffin's [Swift and Pope] is a rewarding read; a detailed and often moving portrait of one of the great literary friendships.' Louise Curran, English Studies

Book Description:

In this book, Dustin Griffin explores the lifelong conversation between two great eighteenth-century English writers. Reading the writings of Swift and Pope in tandem, he clarifies what drew together these two famed satirists, and also uncovers an under-recognized current of irritation and resentment in their relationship.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0521761239
• ISBN 13: 9780521761239
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 276