Swift's Historical Outlook

Abstract

The art and mind of Jonathan Swift have been the objects of ever greater critical attention for the last twenty or thirty years. So thoroughly have the commentators discussed Swift's attitudes and their origins that there would seem to be little left to discover about the Dean's views or why he held them or how he applied them. In respect to the rôle played in Swift's thought by his reading in historiography, however, and the importance of history in the conceptual bases of his writings, critics have assumed more than they have demonstrated. In spite of some useful published disquisitions — by Herbert Davis and Irvin Ehrenpreis — the implications of the importance of Swift's historical outlook have not been fully explored, nor have the formation and configuration of his historically founded beliefs been clarified and documented. The present study will attempt to explain in some detail Swift's ideas of history, where he got them, and how they affected his non-historiographical compositions.Swift's vital interest in historiography is now commonly acknowledged. The post in government he most actively tried to get was that of Historiographer Royal. Between 1714 and 1720, he devoted a good deal of time to composing his “histories” of political activities during the Tory ministry. He essayed a history of England. His letters as well as his other works are packed with references to a multiplicity of historians drawn from disparate ages and cultures. In his library, which numbered about five hundred separate works at the time of his death, at least three fifths were historical opera, including diaries, memoirs, and chronologies.