Swift's "Argument": The Fact and the Fiction of Fighting with Beasts

Abstract

The various critical propositions offered over the years about Swift's Argument against Abolishing seem to have been spitted on the single spear of the essay's elusiveness. Certain eminent Swiftians have simply refused to analyze the source of effectiveness in this complex document.' One critic has called it without a doubt one of the most logically complex essays in English literature ... operating with persistent irony on several levels of satiric intention.2 Underneath the apparent variety of interpretations, however, one discerns two primary orientations. Either the (one would suppose) unarguable position that nominal Christianity should be preserved is taken in some sense as representative of Swift's own sentiments,3 or, on the contrary, it is discounted immediately as literally impossible to a man of Swift's integrity.4 Within the latter class opinion divides again about whether the speaker is a coherent fictive persona, a nominal Christian who fervently believes his own arguments, or is some devious version of Swift himself.