Jonathan Swift

"This collection of critical thinking situates the satire of Jonathan Swift within both its eighteenth-century contexts and our modern anxieties about personal identity and communication. Augustan satire at its most provocative is not simply concerned with the public matters of politics or religion, but also offers a precise medium in which to express the paradox of ironic detachment amidst deep conviction." "Swift has often been regarded as a writer who anticipated many twentieth-century cultural preoccupations, and this volume provides an opportunity to test just how modern he actually was, it also provides an answer to those who would wish to simplify his writing as that of Tory and misogynist."--Jacket.