Histoire De La Littérature Anglaise (volume 4 De 5)

Hippolyte Taine's fourth volume of his monumental History of English Literature is a thunderous psychological portrait of Jonathan Swift, the 18th century's most ferocious satirist. Written in 1863, this French critical masterpiece treats literature as a product of race, moment, and environment, and in Swift it finds its perfect subject: a writer whose bitter genius was forged in the fires of political betrayal, Irish humiliation, and personal despair. Taine traces Swift from his troubled years at Dublin University through his ascent in English political circles to his eventual descent into madness, reading every savage pamphlet and corrosive poem as evidence of a soul at war with the world. The result is criticism that reads like fiction: dramatic, opinionated, and utterly unafraid to grapple with the uncomfortable question of how a man's wounds become his art. For readers who want to understand not just what Swift wrote, but why he wrote it with such fury, Taine's volume remains an indispensable and bracingly opinionated guide.