A Tale of a Tub (Dover Thrift Editions) - Softcover

Swift, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0486817520 ISBN 13: 9780486817521

Verlag: DOVER PUBN INC, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Published anonymously in 1704, this prose satire by the author of Gulliver's Travels presents a story of three brothers, each symbolizing a Christian sect, and an unrelated series of digressions. The "tale" portion centers on Peter, Martin, and Jack, who respectively represent Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and other dissenting Protestant sects. Charged with maintaining their coats — the Christian faith — exactly as issued, the brothers immediately proceed to make alterations. Jonathan Swift's historical allegory ridicules the conflicts between religious factions, and his digressions offer ironic views of contemporary trends in literature, politics, and theology.
Swift's assault on the corruption of the ancient church and the fanaticism of reformers was widely misunderstood at the time of its publication, when England's religion and government were closely linked, causing the author endless problems with churchmen and politicians alike. Acerbic in style and exuberantly witty, A Tale of a Tub remains a powerful parody that ranks among the English language's best satires.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Born in Dublin, Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) studied at Trinity College and was eventually ordained as a priest. Most of his books were first published anonymously or under a pseudonym, including Gulliver's Travels, his most famous work.

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A Tale of a Tub

By Jonathan Swift

Dover Publications, Inc.

Copyright © 2017 Dover Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-486-81752-1

Contents

A Tale of a Tub, 1, 
The History of Martin, 111, 

CHAPTER 1

A TALE OF A TUB

Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind

Diu multumque desideratum

Basima eacabasa eanaa irraurista, diarba da caeotaba fobor camelanthi. Iren. Lib. 1. C. 18.

Juvatque novos decerpere flores, Insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam, Unde prius nulli velarunt tempora Musæ. Lucret.

Treatises written by the same Author, most of them mentioned in the following Discourses; which will be speedily published.

A Character of the present set of Wits in this Island.

A panegyrical Essay upon the Number Three.

A Dissertation upon the principal Productions of Grub Street.

Lectures upon a Dissection of Human Nature.

A Panegyric upon the World.

An analytical Discourse upon Zeal, histori-theo-physi-logically considered.

A general History of Ears.

A modest Defence of the Proceedings of the Rabble in all ages.

A Description of the Kingdom of Absurdities.

A Voyage into England, by a Person of Quality in Terra Australis incognita, translated from the Original.

A critical Essay upon the Art of Canting, philosophically, physically, and musically considered.

AN APOLOGY

For the [Tale of a Tub.]

If good and ill nature equally operated upon Mankind, I might have saved myself the trouble of this Apology; for it is manifest by the reception the following discourse hath met with, that those who approve it are a great majority among the men of taste; yet there have been two or three treatises written expressly against it besides many others that have flirted at it occasionally, without one syllable having been ever published in its defence, or even quotation to its advantage that I can remember, except by the polite author of a late discourse between a Deist and a Socinian.

Therefore, since the book seems calculated to live at least as long as our language and our taste admit no great alterations, I am content to convey some Apology along with it.

The greatest part of that book was finished above thirteen years since, 1696, which is eight years before it was published. The author was then young, his invention at the height, and his reading fresh in his head. By the assistance of some thinking, and much conversation, he had endeavour'd to strip himself of as many real prejudices as he could; I say real ones because, under the notion of prejudices, he knew to what dangerous heights some men have proceeded. Thus prepared, he thought the numerous and gross corruptions in Religion and Learning might furnish matter for a satire that would be useful and diverting. He resolved to proceed in a manner that should be altogether new, the world having been already too long nauseated with endless repetitions upon every subject. The abuses in Religion he proposed to set forth in the Allegory of the Coats and the three Brothers, which was to make up the body of the discourse. Those in Learning he chose to introduce by way of digressions. He was then a young gentleman much in the world, and wrote to the taste of those who were like himself; therefore in order to allure them, he gave a liberty to his pen, which might not suit with maturer years or graver characters, and which he could have easily corrected with a very few blots, had he been master of his papers for a year or two before their publication.

Not that he would have governed his judgment by the ill-placed cavils of the sour, the envious, the stupid, and the tasteless, which he mentions with disdain. He acknowledges there are several youthful sallies which, from the grave and the wise, may deserve a rebuke. But he desires to be answerable no farther than he is guilty, and that his faults may not be multiplied by the ignorant, the unnatural, and uncharitable applications of those who have neither candour to suppose good meanings, nor palate to distinguish true ones. After which he will forfeit his life if any one opinion can be fairly deduced from that book which is contrary to Religion or Morality.

Why should any clergyman of our church be angry to see the follies of fanaticism and superstition exposed, though in the most ridiculous manner; since that is perhaps the most probable way to cure them, or at least to hinder them from farther spreading? Besides, though it was not intended for their perusal, it rallies nothing but what they preach against. It contains nothing to provoke them, by the least scurrility upon their persons or their functions. It celebrates the Church of England as the most perfect of all others in discipline and doctrine; it advances no opinion they reject, nor condemns any they receive. If the clergy's resentments lay upon their hands, in my humble opinion they might have found more proper objects to employ them on: nondum tibi defuit hostis; I mean those heavy, illiterate scribblers, prostitute in their reputations, vicious in their lives, and ruined in their fortunes, who, to the shame of good sense as well as piety, are greedily read merely upon the strength of bold, false, impious assertions, mixed with unmannerly reflections upon the priesthood, and openly intended against all Religion; in short, full of such principles as are kindly received because they are levelled to remove those terrors that Religion tells men will be the consequence of immoral lives. Nothing like which is to be met with in this discourse, though some of them are pleased so freely to censure it. And I wish there were no other instance of what I have too frequently observed, that many of that reverend body are not always very nice in distinguishing between their enemies and their friends.

Had the author's intentions met with a more candid interpretation from some whom out of respect he forbears to name, he might have been encouraged to an examination of books written by some of those authors above described, whose errors, ignorance, dulness and villainy, he thinks he could have detected and exposed in such a manner that the persons who are most conceived to be affected by them, would soon lay them aside and be ashamed. But he has now given over those thoughts; since the weightiest men in the weightiest stations are pleased to think it a more dangerous point to laugh at those corruptions in Religion, which they themselves must disapprove, than to endeavour pulling up those very foundations wherein all Christians have agreed.

He thinks it no fair proceeding that any person should offer determinately to fix a name upon the author of this discourse, who hath all along concealed himself from most of his nearest friends. Yet several have gone a farther step, and pronounced another book to have been the work of the same hand [Letter of Enthusiasm.] with this, which the author directly affirms to be a thorough mistake, he having as yet never so much as read that discourse; a plain instance how little truth there often is in general surmises, or in conjectures drawn from a similitude of style or way of thinking.

Had the author written a book to expose the abuses in Law, or in Physic, he believes the learned professors in either faculty would have been so far from resenting it as to have given him thanks for his pains, especially if he had made an honourable reservation for the true practice of either science. But...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: DOVER PUBN INC
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0486817520
• ISBN 13: 9780486817521
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 128
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Soc. Agr. La Raia Ss; http://www.la-raia.it; ; Strada Monterotondo, 79; Novi Ligure; 15067; Italien