Swift and Pope

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In 1727, shortly before the publication of the first two volumes of their joint Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, Alexander Pope wrote Jonathan Swift a letter in which he expressed his pleasure at the image of their relationship that the work conveyed. "Methinks we look like friends," he wrote, "side by side, serious and merry by turns, conversing interchangeably, and walking down hand in hand to posterity." Elsewhere, Pope would tell Swift that "yours and my name shall stand linked as friends to posterity, both in verse and prose." This course will provide a conceptual context in which to read, discuss, compare and contrast the works of these two writers. Jonathan Swift (1667-1744) and Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Pope is remembered to posterity as the most famous poet of his age, whose satires stung a corrupt political regime during England's rise to world power. His long career came in spite of a disabling childhood tuberculosis that left him crippled for life. (In later years, Pope would refer to his "crazy carcass" and "his long disease, my life.") Swift is seen as a masterful political writer in the first age of party, an early, fierce defender of his native Ireland against English colonial policy, and one of the great prose stylists in the language. (His 1726 work, Gulliver's Travels, has never been out of print). If we look close enough, the lifelong friendship and collaboration between the two-- an Irish Protestant clergyman and an English Catholic poet-- can be viewed as an eighteenth-century rendition of the odd couple. What issues brought them together? Where did they differ on such questions as the role of women, sociability, the nature of the individual in a new consumer society, political economy and the financial revolution, the role of science, global expansion and the ends of empire? These are a few of the questions we will pursue. In addition to the required and collateral readings, each member of the class will be responsible for at least one oral report: by posing a question, by sounding out critical and theoretical response to Swift's and Pope's art, by presenting a thesis on a work at hand, by executing a pantomime, by doing anything short of public scandal to stimulate discussion and to make the class a body unto itself. Each student will also prepare a short, five page paper and a longer critical paper (10-12 pages in length) that demonstrates a capacity for independent thought and research and the ability to argue a thesis in a clear and coherent style.