Jonathan Swift : the Irish identity / Robert Mahony

Mahony, Robert

ISBN 10: 0300063741 / ISBN 13: 9780300063745

Published by New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press, 1995

About this Item

Near fine cloth copy in a good if somewhat edge-nicked and dust-dulled dust wrapper, now mylar-sleeved. Remains particularly well-preserved overall; tight, bright, clean and strong. Physical description: xvii, 222 pages: illustrations; 24 cm. Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-215) and index. Contents: 1. Swift and George Faulkner: Cultivating Irish Memory -- 2. The Early Biographers: Preserving Mixed Impressions -- 3. British Canonization and Irish Diffidence, 1755-1800 -- 4. A Protestant 'Liberator', 1800-1840 -- 5. A Nationalist Ancestor, 1840-1870 -- 6. Nationalism and Historicism: Confirmation and Resistance, 1870-1930 -- 7. From Patriot to Personality, 1930-1995. Subjects: Swift, Jonathan 1667-1745 Homes and haunts Ireland. Nationalism Ireland History 18th century. National characteristics, Irish, in literature. Authors, Irish Homes and haunts Ireland. Authors, Irish 18th century; Biography. Nationalists Ireland; Biography. Statesmen Ireland; Biography.Genre: Bibliography. Illustrated. Summary: This book traces Swift's fluctuating reception in Ireland through the centuries, finding in Swift's ambivalence about his homeland - which he could not love even as he defended its cause - echoes and anticipations of the ambiguities that have marked the development of Irish identity at large. Mahony looks at Swift's posthumous reputation in literary culture and examines his unusual place in Irish political rhetoric. He shows that Swift's patriotic reputation suffered in the later eighteenth century through its seeming irrelevance to shifting political circumstances. 1 Kg.

Seller Inventory # 321868

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Jonathan Swift : the Irish identity / Robert Mahony
• Publisher: New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press
• Publication Date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300063741
• ISBN 13: 9780300063745
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st edition.
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis

Jonathan Swift was internationally acclaimed in his own time for "Gulliver's Travels" and other satires in verse and prose. In his native Ireland, however, he was most fervently admired as a patriot. Advocating economic self-sufficiency for Ireland and resistance to the high-handedness of the British government, Swift represented an articulate challenge to British rule. Although his reputation as an Irish patriot declined after his death, the 20th century has come to recognize him as a founding father of Irish nationalism. This study traces Swift's fluctuating reputation in Ireland through the centuries, examining his nationalist ambivalence for a homeland he could defend but not love and comparing his feelings with the ambiguities that have marked the development of Irish identity more widely. Robert Mahony considers Swift's posthumous reputation in both literary and popular culture and examines his unusual place in Irish political rhetoric. He shows how Swift's reputation suffered in the later 18th century through its seeming irrelevance to shifting political circumstances. In the early 19th century Irish Protestants made him a symbol of their own patriotism within the British union, but he was ignored, or dismissed as a bigot, by most Catholic writers. In the 1840s the tide turned as the Young Ireland movement emphasised Swift's anti-British rhetoric while establishing his Protestant pedigree for contemporary Protestants. Although charges of hypocrisy and of an English cultural orientation continued as late as the 1930s, the construction of Swift as a patriot - with human flaws - was ultimately sustained.