2,254 research outputs found
Some remarks upon a pamphlet, entitl’d, A letter to the seven lords of the committee, appointed to examine Gregg. By the author of the Examiner
No full textReading Swift and Ireland, 1720-1729 : constituences, contexts and constructions of identity in Jonathan Swift's occasional writings of the 1720s
No full textThe 1720s was a decade of crisis in Ireland. Jonathan Swift's occasional writings from these years extend the country's political and economic crises into
dramas of personal and national identity. Part One of this thesis investigates the material conditions of the relationship between Swift, his Irish audience, and the
underlying problems of identity that such an audience simultaneously poses and occludes. Part Two is an anatomy of the literary modes through which that relationship is figured.
The first chapter offers the 1720 Declaratory Act as an important subtext for Swift's 'inaugural' work of the decade, the 1720 Proposalfor the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture. Challenging retrospective constructions of the author's textual and political authority, the chapter examines how Swift the 'Hibernian patriot' was largely an invention of the crisis surrounding the act. Chapter Two
argues that The Drapier's Letters reconfigure the language that had been used in the past to depict the Catholic threat to Protestant Ireland, and use it to depict the
threat emerging from England.
Part Two moves to the question of identity, which Chapter Three designates a kind of 'style', both a mode of expression and a trend in polite society. The writing of history and the social signification of language are the
main concerns of this chapter, which investigates how Irish historiography becomes the focus for a range of concerns in the 1720s. Chapter Four nominates the pastoral genre as an alternative vehicle for the reading and writing of history
in Swift's Ireland. It identifies a Virgilian dialectic of expropriation and protection by a patron as an important method of 'reading' oneself into history and identity. Looking at various manifestations of crisis in Ireland in 1729 - famine, fuel shortages and emigration, the final chapter argues that A Modest Proposal uses techniques of allegory to produce a crisis of interpretation. By
promoting and perpetuating misreading, it mirrors the pervasive climate of error that produced this text.
As a whole the thesis documents three transitions. It traces the emergence of a parodic method of literary and political representation which eventually overwhelms any claims Swift's writing might once have made to positive
advocacy. Once considered the dominant and definitive voice of 1720s Ireland, Swift is re-appraised as one writer among many, and his writing as a product of his society rather than an authoritative comment on it. Finally, the Presbyterians of Ireland are shown to emerge by the end of the decade as the primary focus for the anxieties and aggressions that animate Swift's occasional writings
Fear of fiction: the authorial response to realism in selected works by Swift, Defoe, and Richardson
No full textIf Mrs. Whitehouse produced a pornographic play, it would arouse enormous interest, mainly because of Mrs. Whitehouse’s well known views on pornography. It is an ancient fact of English Literature that two of the best known pioneers of the English realistic novel, Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson, were Puritans. And there is an almost equally ancient critical tradition which traces the easy path of Puritan literature, in combination with other cultural forces, towards the production of realistic fiction. The central argument of this thesis is that there was no such easy path. Puritan autobiography was unrealistic in its very nature, while Puritan feeling towards fiction was hostile, with realistic, or verisimilar fiction provoking most hostility because the most deceitful. Thus the writing of a realistic novel was a radical departure for the Puritan, and one that was fraught with tension. It is this tension, or fear of fiction, and its effects on work of the two Puritan novelists, and that odd Anglican Jonathan Swift, that is the subject of this thesis. Swift joins Defoe and Richardson as an author with a special relationship with Defoe, and himself closer to a fearful anti- mimetic "tradition" than the comic tradition in which he is usually placed alongside Fielding and Sterne. Selected works of the three authors reveal their struggle with the intense problems that realism created for them, and their eventual 'solutions'. Hence by the time that Dr. Johnson made his famous critical statement against the fearful potential of realism in his fourth Rambler [31 March 1750), he was actually formalising material that had been well examined in the fiction under discussion, rather than beating an original critical path in response to Fielding's supposedly 'new' verisimilar form
To what extent is Lemuel Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift a reflection of the writer with regard to political and religious views, and attitudes toward women and the concept of family?
No full textThis extended essay is an examination of the extent to which the protagonist Lemuel Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels is a reflection of Jonathan Swift. It involves the exploration of this research question in terms of politics, religion, attitude to women and family; with references to this piece of literature and some secondary resources when necessary. The quotations from published literary criticism are either refuted by examples from the novel or supported in the light of evidence from the novel. Other secondary resources include Swift’s two other prose works, The Modest Proposal and A Letter to a Very Young Lady on Her Marriage, which are referred to briefly for clarification of the evidence. The purpose of this study is to analyse in what ways and to what extent the protagonist is an author-surrogate in the abovementioned ways.
This essay is comprised of two sections, namely “politics and religion” and “women and family”, each focusing on a particular aspect of the investigation. In the first section, Swift’s political and religious standpoint is discussed extensively in order to correctly evaluate Gulliver’s paradigm. By making connections between the beliefs of the author and those of Gulliver, the relation between the two is established to support the claim of this essay. In the second section, the female figures in the novel and Gulliver’s perception of them are inspected. The plot is also taken into consideration in this part of the inquiry although the central focus is on the persona.
In the conclusion, it is validated that Gulliver is a reflection of Jonathan Swift with regard to political and religious vision, and attitude towards women and family, by juxtaposing and assembling the main elements of personification of Gulliver and Jonathan Swift’s personal ideas and experiences
Vaux’s Swift migratory connectivity
No full textPopulations of Vaux’s Swift (Chaetura vauxi), like those of many aerial insectivores, are rapidly declining. Determining
when and where populations are limited across the annual cycle is important for their conservation. Establishing the
linkages between wintering and breeding sites and the strength of the connections between them is a necessary first
step. In this study, we analyzed 3 stable isotopes (δ13C, δ15N, δ2H) from feathers collected during spring migration from
Vaux’s Swifts that perished during a stopover on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. We previously analyzed
claw tissue (grown during winter) from the same individuals, revealing that the swifts likely wintered in 2 or 3 locations/
habitats. Here, we used stable isotope analysis of flight feathers presumed to have been grown on, or near, the breeding
grounds to determine the likely previous breeding locations and presumed destinations for the swifts. Stable isotope
values (δ13C, δ15N, δ2H) showed no meaningful variation between age classes, sexes, or with body size. Surprisingly, ~26%
of the birds sampled had feather isotope values that were not consistent with growth on their breeding grounds. For the
remaining birds, assigned breeding origins appeared most consistent with molt origins on Vancouver Island. Overall, migratory connectivity of this population was relatively weak (rM = 0.07). However, the degree of connectivity depended on
how many winter clusters were analyzed; the 2-cluster solution suggested no significant connectivity, but the 3-cluster
solution suggested weak connectivity. It is still unclear whether low migratory connectivity observed for Vaux’s Swift and
other aerial insectivores may make their populations more or less vulnerable to habitat loss; therefore, further efforts
should be directed to assessing whether aerial insectivores may be habitat limited throughout the annual cycle.Peer reviewedarticlespublishedVaux’s Swiftaerial insectivoresChaetura vauximigrationmigratory connectivitypopulation declinesstable isotopesstopove
Recommended from our members
Jonathan Swift, Sir William Temple and the international balance of power
No full texttextThis dissertation investigates the balance of power theory of international relations in the works of Jonathan Swift and his mentor Sir William Temple. Both Temple and Swift are known to have championed balance-of-power foreign policy, yet no sustained study of the subject exists. To begin, I argue that Temple used balance as a metaphor for division or separation. His policy of preserving the “Balance of Christendom” translates to sowing division among European states, and for the same reason he rejects balance of power at home. Proceeding to Swift, while commentators have long known that he advocated the classical theory of constitutional balance, they have neglected his engagement with international balance. Swift assimilates Temple’s positions into a universal theory based on classical authors; he sees balance of power as an element in the broader quarrel of ancients and moderns. The ancient view posits an independent agent who operates within the constraints of a system; the modern, by contrast, either exaggerates agency to the point of divine-right absolutism or minimizes it to the extent that only an impersonal, clockwork-like system remains. In both cases, the moderns pursue material power at each other’s expense, neglecting the intangible benefits of due separation. This theory has important ramifications for Swift’s international writings. For years scholars have emphasized Swift’s conspiracy theorizing in the Conduct of the Allies, but I argue that he discredits the Whig war cry of “Balance of Europe,” which sought military power (the balance of forces) as an end in itself, and reasserts balance as a policy of slicing Europe into as many separate kingdoms as possible. Ultimately, however, Swift’s most lasting contribution appears in Gulliver’s Travels. Here he depicts maritime power as the quintessential means by which moderns pursue absolute power, and intimates a political “Balance of Earth” as a satirical correction. This study, the first to focus on the international dimension of Swift’s political theory, offers a corrective to literary studies that favor domestic politics and yields insights into the evolution of balance-of-power theory and the intersection of culture and foreign policy at the dawn of the British empire.Englis
Proteus Swift Compiler
No full textThe folks at Jet Propulsion Labs, develop multiple types of avionics software to facilitate their usefulness, and one such pattern commonly found in such software is the Hierarchical State Machines (HSMs). HSMs have been implemented as libraries for many popular programming languages that do not support HSMs as a first class feature. However, the problems of treating these necessary patterns as secondary language features, which are fundamentally short changed to the whole experience of a programming language, crop up way too often. Problems like ease of use, code performance, and code safety are all issues that appear when trying to develop or utilize HSMs for use in avionics software. All of these problems arise from the languages that these HSMs are implemented in, not from the HSMs themselves. Thus there is a fledgling programming language by the name of Proteus to solve these issues. Proteus supports HSMs directly into the language, and allows an advanced level of combinatorial interactions between HSMs themselves. Proteus itself is also very similar to C/C++ styled languages, so anyone familiar with imperative styled languages should feel right at home. However, the first implementation of the Proteus language compiler fell victim to the same problems that most HSM implementations succumb to as well. Thus this project is the entire rewrite of the Proteus language compiler implemented in Swift. With utilizing a whole different programming language that is deemed safer hopefully the compiler itself will be overall more structurally sound in terms of code safety. There are many differences between the C++ implementation of the Proteus language compiler and the Swift implementation that aim to improve the overall experience. For instance, the C++ implementation's target language is C++ and the target language for the Swift implementation is the classic C language. This change improves the FFI interactions between Proteus with other programming languages and Proteus' output can be better suited to meshing with binding generator libraries to further have support with automated features from many languages. Proteus has already been developed with the strict scrutiny from JPL stakeholders so this translation from C++ to Swift has been more tame than the past development of older Proteus compilers. It is with these changes that hopefully the Proteus language compiler can be used to make safe HSMs that can simulate real space applications, and many other features involved in the development of JPL's avionic software.by Matthew Fulle
Laughing Them Into Religion: A Comparison of the Contexts, Causes, and Effects of Jonathan Swift's A Tale of A Tub and C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters
No full textJonathan Swift and C. S. Lewis had extraordinary similarities in their lives up to their respective writings of Tale of A Tub and The Screwtape Letters. Beyond the biographical parallels, there were great similarities in the religious, historical, and political contexts surrounding the two works, even though they were published 237 years apart. These facts have been ignored by scholars, yet more important than the similitude is what Swift and Lewis did differently in spite of it. These differences represent deliberate choices each author made and provide greater insights about them and these seminal works. Both of these brilliant men became convinced that their societies needed a rebirth of spirituality and chose highly creative religious satire to convey their respective messages and “laugh us into religion.”Master of Arts (MA)Englis
Swift
No full textVariant Date: 1973.Medium: Etching.Print Image Size: 14 7/8 x 13 7/8 inches.Print Edition: 40 (with 5 artist's proofs).Alternate Medium: Color etching and aquatint.Ink(s): brown.Support: Rives BFK paper.Portrait of eighteenth-century novelist and political pamphleteer Johnathan Swift, seated at a table. Text around the author's head reads "The good dean Swift." A later woodcut of the author [CMA 2005.015.024.004] was included in the Seven Poets portfolio
- …
