Satire and Persona in Swift’s A Tale of a Tub
-Master Thesis-
Joost Schmaal
0209805
Prof. Dr. Roger Eaton
26 June 2008
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1. Introduction
Table of Contents
2
2. Structure
3
3. Background to A Tale of a Tub
7
3.1 Religious Allegory
8
3.2 Attacks on the abuses in Learning
10
3.3 Reception of A Tale of a Tub
13
4. Satire
13
5. Voices
15
5.1 Voice 1 – The Apologist
16
5.2 Voice 2 – The Grubstreet Hack
17
5.3 Voice 3 – The Historian
18
6. The Grubstreet Hack
19
7. Persona
22
7.1 Critical Debate
22
7.2 Merging voices
24
8 Grubstreet
26
8.1 Swift’s enemies
29
9. The Grubstreet Hack persona
30
9.1. Problems
33
9.2. Satire and Sub-themes
34
10. Conclusion
36
11. Works Cited
38
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1. Introduction
Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub 1 is in many ways an odd book. A glance at the index
reveals that the book features no less than eleven separate sections and two separate essays.
The tale proper, to which the title refers, takes up only five, with the other sections being
either digressions or prefatory items. For the fifth and final edition of A Tale, which was
published in 1710, Jonathan Swift even added one more prefatory item - the “Apology” - and
some satirical notes. Swift purposely exaggerated the number of prefatory items and
digressions for satirical purposes, but an abundance of such items was not uncommon in
literary works of Swift’s age, especially in those written by the “Moderns 2 .” The political and
religious turmoil of the seventeenth century had been accompanied by an increasingly
influential group of modern essayists and pamphleteers. The works produced by these people
often featured many prefatory items and digressions, which were included to show their
analytical qualities as well as their loyalty and gratitude to their patrons. Two of Swift’s
foremost adversaries, Dr. Richard Bentley and William Wotton, belonged to this group.
In A Tale, Swift satirizes these people and the movement they represented, using a
persona who claims to be responsible for the text. The persona states that he is a “servant of
modern forms” and an admirer of scientific experiments. He takes great pride in the fact that
he has just been admitted to a Grubstreet fraternity of hack authors. Although these hacks
regarded themselves mostly as Moderns like Wotton and Bentley, their reputation was much
worse. They wrote libellous and seditious texts for money and lived in one the poorest
districts of eighteenth century London. Relying solely on their pen for their survival, these
hacks wrote anything about any topic, as long as they were paid. Swift strongly detested this
1
Swift, A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books, Mechanical Operations of the Spirit, ed. Guthkelch and Nicol
Smith (2nd edition; Oxford 1957). Hereafter referred to as A Tale. All quotations from the Tale and from The
Battle of the Books are from this edition.
2
The Moderns, as opposed to the Ancients, were a group of people with great interest and trust in science, and
believed that the rapid advancements made in the field of physics could also be possible in the field of literature.
The rejected the idea that literature had great moral value, and largely disregarded the works of ancient Greek
and Roman authors. They will be dealt with in great detail in the following chapters.
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form of literary prostitution, and saw the hacks and the Moderns as destructive forces in
literature. With A Tale, Swift attacks these movements by ridiculing almost every aspect of
their work.
Regarded by many critics as Swift’s most complex work, A Tale has sparked
numerous critical debates, with one of its most controversial subjects being Swift’s use of
persona. Although many critics agree that there is indeed someone other than Swift in the
text, claiming to be the author, there is no consensus about the identity of this persona, or
about the satirical implications of his inclusion in A Tale. This essay will focus mainly on
these two topics. The first part of the essay serves as an introduction to A Tale, focussing on
its structure, its background, and its use of satire. From chapter 5 and onwards, the essay will
analyse the text more thoroughly. It will distinguish between several different voices,
highlight the characteristics of its most prominent voice, and will describe Swift’s use of
persona in greater detail. Chapters 7, 8, and 9, will introduce the main argument of the essay
and will show how Swift’s use of persona and satire is not only complex, but also very clever
and subtle.
2. Structure
One of the most puzzling elements of A Tale is its structure. Borrowing from Speck, the
anatomy of A Tale is as follows:
Contents of A Tale of a Tub (fifth edition, 1710).
1. Title page, and list of “treatises wrote by the same author”.
2. An “Apology”.
3. “The Dedication to Lord Somers”.
4. “The Bookseller to the Reader”.
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5. “The Epistle Dedicatory to … Prince Posterity”.
6. “The Preface”.
7. Section one: “The Introduction”.
8. Section two: “The Tale”.
9. Section three: “A Digression concerning Critics”.
10. Section four: “The Tale”.
11. Section five: “A Digression in the Modern Kind”.
12. Section six: “The Tale”
13. Section seven: “A Digression in praise of Digressions”.
14. Section eight: “The Tale”.
15. Section nine: “A Digression concerning the original, the use and improvement of
madness in a Commonwealth”.
16. Section ten: “A Further Digression”.
17. Section eleven: “The Tale”.
18. Section twelve: “The Conclusion”.
Earlier editions of A Tale did not have the “Apology” and its readers had to rely on the
“Preface” for pointers on how to approach the text. The “Preface” explains a “refined and
curious observer” has found that seamen have a custom when they meet a whale, of flinging
out an empty tub to divert the whale from damaging the ship. The observer interprets the
whale to represent Hobbes’ Leviathan (Tale 40), whereas the ship represents the
Commonwealth. It was decreed that someone should write a text that can function as the tub,
to distract the Leviathans that attack the Commonwealth. The ‘author’ of the “Preface”, as
Swift writes, was ‘honor done to be engaged in the performance’ (Tale 41). However, based
solely on that information, the reader would not expect anything remotely like what is in A
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Tale. As Mueller says, ‘the tub is hardly empty, and the Tale’s narrator proves no great
champion of his stated cause’ (Mueller 2003, 207). Disregarding, for now, the possibility of
satire in An “Apology”, the fact that Swift inserted it in the fifth edition to supposedly explain
some of the topics, makes it perhaps a better place to look for answers than the “Preface”. 3 In
the “Apology”, which critics like Bywaters and Speck suggest is indeed the best guide to the
tale, Swift explains that the reason he wrote A Tale was to address the “numerous and gross
Corruptions in Religion and Learning”. The abuses in religion are dealt with in what Swift
calls “the body of the discourse”: the allegory of the coats and the three brothers. The abuses
in learning are described in the digressions. The digressions and the sections of the religious
allegory are not only different with regards to their contents, but also stylistically. The author
persona in the digressions uses complex sentence structures, scientific diction and often
almost loses himself in his train of thought, whereas the author persona from the religious
allegory writes in a much more accessible way. The sentences are shorter, the diction is easier
and the pompousness that pervades the digressions is not present in the allegorical sections.
This sharp division between the two separate parts has led some critics to treat the two
parts as two essentially different books, dealing with different topics and written for different
audiences. One such critic is Philip Hart. He argues that when Swift discusses the abuses in
religion, he consistently preserves the character of an historian, whereas he treats the abuses
in learning as a modern essayist. This modern essayist then, is an impersonation of the likes of
Wotton and Bentley, and is ridiculed to the extent that everything he praises is consequently
ridiculed as well. The most striking aspect of this impersonation, says Hart, is that it ends
when Swift deals with the abuses in religion (Hart 6). This, and many other differences
between the treatment of the two abuses leads him to focus solely on the tale proper,
disregarding the digressions completely. His strongest argument for doing so is that he
3
The possible satire in the Apology is that the Apology does not show Swift’s intentions, but serves only to
ridicule the supposed author, and the readers who take him seriously. This possibility will be analysed in more
detail in Chapter 8.
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believes that the tale proper was written and completed much earlier than the digressions.
Starkman uses a similar argument to treat only the abuses in learning, claiming that the
differences between the two parts are too great to warrant a single interpretation (Starkman
44). Similarly, Clark focus solely on the abuses in learning. However, he does not agree with
Hart’s argument that the “Digressions on Madness” should be grouped with the tale proper.
Instead, he feels that this digression, and more specifically the passage about the fools and
knaves, is one of the keys to understanding the satire of the Hack (Clark 198).
Even for critics like Hart and Starkman, who forgo trying to bind everything together
but focus only on the parts that are similar in content, the complex structure of A Tale
provides a number of difficulties. Hart, for example, acknowledges that one of the
digressions, namely the “Digression on Madness”, is not really a digression like the others.
Because, he says, this digression is “intimately connected with Section VIII” and is a
digression “only in the sense that it interrupts the story of Jack’s madness in order to discuss
the genus of which Jack’s disorder is a species” (Hart 4). Consequently, Hart includes the
“Digression on Madness” in what Swift calls the “body of the discourse” and discusses it in
great detail as if it were part of the religious allegory.
On the other side of the spectrum are critics like Paulson, who treats the two abuses
not separately, but jointly. He argues, upon theoretical foundations supplied by Frye’s
Anatomy of Criticism that A Tale deals with a unified theme, and displays a unified structure.
The theme, he argues is the Gnostic myth 4 , and the unified structure is supplied by the
appearances of the Grubstreet Hack (Paulson 24). Another consistent theme, he argues, is
Swift’s attack on vanity, which he finds underlying all aspects of modernism, including
learning and religion (Paulson 56).
4
Gnosticism is a doctrine in which Matter and Spirit are completely separated. All things material, including
God’s own creation, are considered to be evil, whereas all spiritual things are good. Only the select few who
have received gnosis, or spiritual power, from the Supreme God, are saved from eternal perdition. This doctrine
is fundamentally different from traditional Christianity, which holds that all things created by good are
fundamentally good. That is, until Adam and Eve disobeyed God and brought Sin into the world.
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To summarize, the common argument of the critics who advocate a separate treatment
of the tale proper and the digressions, is twofold. The first is that the subject matter of the tale
proper is clearly different, the satiric targets are not the Moderns, but the atheists and
dissenters of the Anglican Church, and the aim of the text seems not so much to ridicule and
attack, but rather to defend and justify. The second argument is that the two texts are
stylistically completely different, as their respective “authors” employ a different diction, use
different literary techniques, and address issues from different viewpoints.
However, striking as these differences are, there are several reasons to doubt the
wisdom in treating the two parts as separate texts. The first and most obvious reason is that
the two parts are published in one book, with each chapter from one part following up on a
chapter from the other. Although Swift may have written both parts at different times, he saw
enough reason to publish them as a single text. Swift incorporated both elements in one book
and mixed them together in his chapter-structure. Another factor that reveals a certain unity is
that there is enough textual evidence that links the two parts together. Although in the tale
proper the author no longer seems to wear the pedantic garb of a modern Grubstreet
pamphleteer, but has donned the grey robe of an historian instead, he has not turned into an
entirely different person either. As the following chapters will show, the hack may not
obtrude nearly as persistently in the tale proper as in the digressions, but he is not completely
absent either.
3. Background to A Tale of a Tub
Critics like Hart and Starkmann have argued that Swift’s intentions to attack the
abuses in learning and the abuses in religion were not inspired by the same circumstances.
Hart argues, on the basis of many different letters, documentation and field research, that both
parts of the book can not only be distinguished in terms of style and content, but they were
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also written at different times. 5 Additionally, the attacks were elicited by different
circumstances. Controversies in which Swift took more than a passing interest functioned as
the background of his attacks. Each controversy offered him targets for ridicule and materials
for parody in the writings of the ones he chose to attack (Hart 10). In this chapter, the
different backgrounds to the tale proper and the digressions and prefatory material, and the
controversies Swift took part in, will be discussed in greater detail.
3.1 Religious Allegory
In the “Apology”, Swift explains how the tale about the abuses in religion is a
religious allegory in which three major religious movements are represented by three
brothers, and the testament by their father’s will. Near the end of the tale proper, only one
brother, Martin, symbolising Anglicanism, still has his sanity. Peter has become an
authoritative pompous tyrant and Jack has completely lost his mind, whereas Martin seems to
have found a rational compromise between the material world and Christian ideals. The tale
proper seemingly “celebrates the Church of England as the most perfect of all others in
Discipline and Doctrine” (Tale 5).
The background of his religious satire was a controversy that lasted over fifteen years
and engaged many disputants. According to the available evidence, the religious allegory was
written in 1695 and 1696 (Hart 7). During this time, Swift held the prebend of Kilroot, which
was a parish near Belfast that was comprised largely of Presbyterians (Higgins 96). Hart’s
study shows that a specific tradition of Anglican apologetics, namely the Anglican rationalist
polemics against Catholicism, Puritanism and atheism, was the immediate religious and
philosophical background for the religious allegory (Hart 154). The Anglican rationalists,
5
Although Hart’s argument is that because of this, the two parts should be treated separately, he does grant that
Swift did not just put them together in 1704 and published them as a single volume. Although, he reasons, the
religious allegory was almost complete, Swift made a number of changes to make it fit in with the rest of the
book.
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who greatly influenced Swift, were seventeenth-century scholars who advocated the doctrines
of the Church of England by writing polemics against religions that failed, in their eyes, to
integrate Reason and Revelation into a rational basis for belief (Hart 27). Although the
Catholics accepted unaided reason as a road to religious truth, this was only to the point
where it did not touch upon their most sacred concepts such as the Trinity, for which they
turned to revelations and apostolic tradition. The Puritans held the belief that unaided reason
could only lead to error, and relied solely on the revelations of Holy Writ as their foundation.
The final group, which Hart calls atheists or sceptics, denied such mysteries as the Trinity and
regarded the Revelation only as a complement to the truths reached by reason. The Anglican
rationalist shared many of the views of the Catholics, but regarded apostolic tradition as a
hindrance, rather than as a tool, to a rational belief. They did see the merit in unaided
reasoning, but only as complementary to the Holy Scriptures and its mysteries.
Scholars of all three factions were actively promoting their religious views and
pointing to the flaws of others. Although Anglicanism still had a good grasp on the majority
of the people of England, the threat of Catholicism, with one of its proponents being the
exiled James II at the court of the aggressive Louis XIV, was felt strongly (Speck 91).
Another threat to the established church came from the Dissenters. Having received freedom
of worship under the Toleration Act of 1689, their voice became more and more prominent.
Attendance at the established Church dropped, and the congregations of the Dissenters
became more popular. This led to serious concern for the power of the Church among many
Anglican clergymen, which in turn led to a great number of written apologetics. The greatest
danger, however, came from the sceptics, deists and atheist. Championed by Locke and
Hobbes, their reasoning and publications were considered by the established Church as
downright heresy, as they undermined the very foundation upon which it was build.
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In A Tale, Swift defends the Anglican Church because it is the best alternative of all
religions. Catholicism and the voices of Dissent, Swift argues, are ultimately just symptoms
of insanity, whereas the Anglican Church is the rational choice. However, Hart argues, the
defence was already somewhat old-fashioned when Swift wrote it, and definitely when he
published A Tale in 1704. In 1695, when Swift was writing the religious allegory, Catholicism
and Puritanism had ceased to be a serious threat to the establishment and while the choice of
literary weapons in the allegory had been popular before the Revolution, they had been
largely discarded afterwards (Hart 153). The same could be said for the attack on atheism.
The threat was gone and the premises upon which the attack was based were no longer
current. All in all, says Hart, Swift had “been flogging many a dead horse in his first venture
into satire” (Hart 153).
3.2 Attacks on the abuses in Learning
Swift’s attack on the abuses in learning was provoked by a number of circumstances,
the first of which was the flood of heretical, irreligious and seditious literature that swept over
England after the expiry of the censoring Licensing Act (Speck 14). This act stipulated that
writings on government or religion had to be approved by state censors before they could be
published. Similarly, books on philosophy and divinity needed prior approval of a bishop.
Whereas some clergymen were of the opinion that the Licensing Act should be restored in
order to deal with these new texts, Swift took the view that it was better to ridicule than to
repress the texts (Speck 54). 6 The immediate background for many of the digressions, was an
academic controversy that, despite its short outbursts of activity, neither lasted long nor had
many disputants. At the centre of the controversy was the English statesman and man of
letters, Sir William Temple, whose bundled letters Swift edited before the publication of A
6
Mueller does not agree. She says: “Throughout his career, Swift advocated censorship of writing he considered
harmful to the public peace, including works that questioned the existence of God or that challenged the
established church” (Mueller 2003, 208).
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Tale. In 1690, Temple, with help from the honorary Charles Boyle 7 , had published an essay
titled Upon Ancient and Modern Learning, in which he argues that old writings, primarily the
Fables of Aesop and the Epistles of Phalaris, were better than any kind of modern text, and
could improve the reader more than modern science could. This essay inflamed a controversy
that had already been brewing for some time. The Ancients versus Moderns debate was not
just about a preference for old books over new ones, but about two completely different
concepts of knowledge. The Ancients, on the one hand, trusted ancient models of taste and
morality and stressed the relationship between the teaching of those models and the welfare of
people. The Moderns, on the other hand, saw knowledge as part of a progress toward even
greater degrees of understanding about experience. Although they did value the ancient texts,
they treated them from a scientific point of view, rather than a moral one (Mueller 204). Swift
lamented the emergence of a new brew of non-literary literary men, who wrote academic
treatises and commentaries on numerous topics that touched only lightly on the literary
classics. For example, Pope – a close friend of Swift’s – had remarked on the willingness of
commentators on Homer to discuss anything rather than the poetry as such (Rogers 189). In
men such as Bentley, Swift saw a similar commitment to the world of letters without any vital
engagement in the human and moral qualities he believed all great works of literature should
posses. So, for both sides, there was certainly more at stake than just old or new books. As
Mueller says: “to the twenty-first-century reader, the Ancients and Moderns debate might
look like petty squabbling between privileged men with nothing better to do; but for the
participants, the course of civilisation was at stake” (Mueller 203).
In response to Temple’s essay, William Wotton, one of the most renowned scholars of
his age, published his Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning in 1694, in which he
argued that modern scholarship had already yielded more knowledge of the whole of the
7
Charles Boyle was an influential religious academic and a staunch defender of the Ancients.
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ancient world, than any single ancient writer could have. The controversy reached its climax
when in 1697, Wotton bundled the second edition of his essay with an essay by his friend Dr.
Richard Bentley (Mueller 204). Bentley, who was, like Wotton, a brilliant scholar, had
studied the origins of the fables of Aesop and had found that they had been written much
more recently than Temple had assumed. Given the fact that Temple had based his entire
argument for ancient authors on the notion that those two texts were indeed ancient, Bentley’s
refutation of their authenticity was very embarrassing for him. A number of counter-attacks
followed, but these focussed more on the alleged barbarous attack on the gentleman Temple,
than on the academic qualities of Bentley’s essay. Allegedly, when Bentley was keeper of the
St. James’s Library, he had hindered one Temple’s assistant’s access to a manuscript in his
care, which was taken as a serious affront to Temple (Speck 15). Swift must have realized that
he could not successfully challenge the accuracy of Bentley’s essay when he wrote The Battle
of the Books in 1697. To defend Temple, he had to rely on the effectiveness of the literary
devices he used to better his opponent, says Davis (Davis 111). This mock heroic battle
between actual books in the King’s library allowed him to ridicule the Moderns and
emphasize the aesthetic and moral qualities of the Ancients, without having to deal with
Bentley’s essay. Bentley and Wotton appear in the Battle, but are portrayed as cowards, who
may have managed to steal the armour of Aesop and Phalaris, but are otherwise unable to
harm them in any way.
The notion that the Ancients versus Moderns debate represented more to Swift than a
nice way to kill some time and defend a friend in need, is evidenced by the fact that he
published his Battle of the Books together with A Tale in 1704. Sir William Temple had died
in 1699 and with him the row that caused Swift to write the text. However, Swift’s views as
an embattled Ancient had not changed at all, prompting him not only to include the Battle of
the Books in A Tale, but also to continue his attack on the abuses in learning.
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3.3 Reception of A Tale of a Tub
Even though Swift published A Tale anonymously and never claimed it as his own
work, he was at once recognised in the inner circles of Church and State, and in the literary
world, as the author (Acworth 29). Most of the critics focussed on the tale proper, which
immediately attracted more attention than the other parts of the book. According to Speck,
this was because “Swift’s contemporaries took their religion a good deal more seriously than
their learning” (Speck 75). Sharpe, Archbishop of York, showed it to Queen Anne and
represented it as a blasphemous book. Her outrage is widely regarded as one of the reasons
that Swift’s prospect of a Bishopric was shattered (Acworth 30). To address the criticism,
Swift included the “Apology” to the fifth edition of A Tale, as well as some of notes to the
text. Borrowing from Wotton’s condemning review and analysis of the work, Swift used
many of his notes to ridicule him once more, claiming in the “Apology” that the likes of
Wotton are good at explaining certain difficult passages, but are useless and without wit when
they want to find some kind of moral quality in them.
4. Satire
In the preface to the Battle of the Books, Swift writes that “Satire is a sort of glass
wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s faces but their own; which is the chief
reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with
it” (Battle of the Books 104). While this may be generally true, Swift, more often than not left
little room for doubt about whom he satirized. Instead of remaining vague or directly
ridiculing a group of people, rather than a single person, the prefatory material and
digressions feature many direct references like W_tt_n, and D.B., which his reading public
would have instantaneously linked to Wotton and Dr. Richard Bentley. Although Swift’s
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irony can be destructive and not very subtle, the underlying literary techniques are often very
complex and multilayered. He uses many different techniques to ridicule and punish his
targets, or to point out their hypocrisy. As Speck states: “In so far as the art of satire is to
point out the inconsistency between the ideal and reality, between what men claim to be and
what they really are, Swift developed it to perfection” (Speck 37).
As is often the case with satirical works, it is difficult to establish precisely when the
author is serious and when he is not. Even though this question might not be as relevant for
every satirical work, it is very important for A Tale because of Swift’s Menippean satire. 8
Named after the Greek Menippus of Gadara 9 , this particular form of satire emphasizes
combining parody with satire and mixing together several different kinds of discourse in a
single work (Suarez 116). A Menippean satirist like Swift often uses satiric parody, which
appropriates another person’s discourse to create ridicule. Suarez distinguishes two methods
in satiric parody. The first is the transposition of a source work into a new work to alter its
original meaning, and the second is the imitation and exaggeration of those elements in the
source work that appear most worthy of censure (Suarez 116). An example in which Swift
uses this particular kind of Menippean satire is his attack on Lord Wharton in 1712. Swift
disliked the prominent Whig Wharton so much that he once described him as “the most
universal villain I ever knew” (Speck39). The satirical technique Swift used for his attack is
similar to the one he used in large parts of A Tale. In A Pretended Letter of Thanks from Lord
Wharton to the Lord Bishop of Asaph, Swift, pretending to be Wharton, lets his adversary say
ridiculous things about a series of sermons of the Bishop of Asaph. Swift does not ridicule
Lord Wharton or the sermons of the bishop directly, but lets Wharton, who was an atheist,
praise these sermons for their immortal qualities. Had Swift praised the sermons in the same
8
Unlike Suarez, Speck classifies Swift as a satirist writing in the tradition of the Latin satirists Horace and
Juvenal. Hammond, however, recognizes that Swift may have learned something from the likes of Lucian and
Irenaeus, but believes Erasmus’ Praise of Folly to be the cause of Swift’s “sudden discovery” of this type of
satire.
9
Menippus (Greek: Μένιππος) of Gadara, was a Cynic and satirist who lived during the 3rd century BCE.
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way, the description would have been a straight piece of irony. By adding a different layer,
Swift intensifies the satirical effect, because he now not only ridicules the sermons of the
bishop, but also Wharton, his fellow Whigs and the bishop himself.
Swift uses this technique as well in A Tale. Instead of Swift directly ridiculing persons
and movements, Swift creates a straw man, or persona. 10 By letting this persona say or do
ridiculous things, Swift ridicules not only his persona, but also everything he stands for and
says. One of the many examples of this technique in A Tale is when Swift’s persona praises
Dryden and his extensive use of prefaces and justifies his own abundance of them as follows:
“He [Dryden] has often said to me in confidence that the world would have never suspected
him to be so great a poet, if he had not assured them so frequently in his Prefaces that it was
impossible they could either doubt or forget it (Tale 63).”With this single line, Swift ridicules
Dryden’s abilities as a poet, his reliance on boastful prefaces, the people who like Dryden,
and his finally, his own persona for emulating such a person.
5. Voices
Unlike the relatively straightforward attack on Lord Wharton in A Pretended Letter,
Swift’s satire in A Tale is at times a lot less clear, as there seems to be no single consistent
voice throughout the text. Rather, several distinctly different voices can be discerned. One
voice is erratic, even bordering on madness, and seemingly represents almost everything
Swift hates; it praises the Moderns, their scientific methods and values, and generally dislikes
everything that was not produced by the Moderns. Another voice is much more solemn and
serious, and talks about an issue that was really close to Swift’s heart: the attacks on the
established religion. Yet another voice can arguably be found in the “Apology”, which is
more remote, written in the third person, and deals with the criticism Swift received upon
10
According to The New Oxford Dictionary of English, persona is a literary term to denote a role or character
adopted by an author. In Latin literally: “mask, character played by an actor”.
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publishing the first edition of A Tale. This chapter will identify these three main voices and
show where and how they differ. 11
It is important to realize that behind the different voices, there is always the actual
writing of Swift. Jonathan Swift is responsible for the entire text and is, apart from the
persons he specifically identifies in the text, the only person who is alive outside the text.
Swift’s views are the views that led him to write A Tale, to join the Ancients and Moderns
controversy and to prefix the “Apology”. Notwithstanding the complexity of the different
voices and viewpoints, Swift remains the one who put the words on paper, which suggests a
certain overarching unity, even if at first glance, their might seem to be none.
5.1 Voice 1 – The Apologist
The first chapter of the book, the “Apology”, already presents a number of difficulties.
The first is that it was put in six years after A Tale’s first publication. This not only sets it
apart from the rest of the book, but also makes it very difficult to analyse the chapter in light
of an overall motive for writing the book. Although Speck argues that “it [the “Apology”] is
usually taken as straight talk from Swift himself” (Speck 75), critics like Mueller have argued
that to do so would be a great mistake. Instead of identifying the apologist as Swift, they
suggest the “Apology” is yet another instance in the book in which Swift plays a role.
Although the tone and style differ greatly from the other parts in the book, his posture of
innocent shock can hardly be attributed to Swift himself (Mueller 2003, 206). Instead, says
Mueller, he knew that the reading public would be outraged and suspected they would not
understand. With the “Apology”, Swift creates an opportunity to not only clear up any
misunderstandings, but also to take a jab at the people who misunderstood his work. The
11
For purpose of structure and legibility, the several minor voices (such as that of the bookseller) will not be
analysed in great detail.
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“Apology” will be dealt with in more detail in later chapters, but for now it is enough to
establish that this is the first voice in the novel.
5.2 Voice 2 – The Grubstreet Hack
Lacking the “Apology”, the 1704 text throws the reader right into the deep end of the
pool. The second page of A Tale introduces a voice who reveals himself to be the author of
not only A Tale, “written by the same author”, but also of many other treatises with names
such as “A Panegyric upon the World” and “A Dissertation upon the principal Productions of
Grubstreet”. The statement on the title page that A Tale was “Written for the Universal
Improvement of Mankind” resembles the claims made by the Royal Society for the
Improvement of Natural Knowledge, founded in 1662 (Speck 78). This Society often added
phrases like this to their dissertations and panegyrics. If the voice uses similar phrases, it must
either mean that he is a pretended member of the Society, or that he emulates them because he
praises them. The fact that Swift was never a member of any such Society, whereas many of
his adversaries like Wotton and Bentley were, strengthens the idea that the alleged author is
not Swift, but a fabricated persona. The mention of the treatises supports that notion. Swift
never wrote the treatises that he attributes to the author, and judging from their rather absurd
titles, likely never would. Although it is not yet clear who this person is and who he
represents, it seems clear that one cannot identify him as Swift. The prose of the persona is
often convoluted and pompous, and has an air of learnedness about it. One example in which
he uses such language comes from a Digressions upon Digressions: “There are certain
common Privileges of a Writer, the Benefit whereof, I Hope, there will be no Reason to
doubt; Particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very
useful and profound is coucht underneath: and again, that whatever word or Sentence is
Printed in a different Character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either of
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Wit or Sublime” (Tale 46-7). The voice of this persona is clearly different from that of the
“Apology”, and as such constitutes the second voice in A Tale. It is used in most of the
prefatory material and the digressions.
5.3 Voice 3 – The Historian
A third voice can be distinguished in the chapters which Swift refers to as “the body of
the discourse”: the tale proper. Having established that the persona of the Grubstreet Hack is
not Swift, but rather someone whose ideas and values are diametrically opposed to his, and
whose loud and erratic style mimics that of a madman rather than a sensible man of literature,
the voice in the tale proper suggests that someone else has taken his place. When the tale
proper starts, the diction and the style of the text changes from pompous and (mock) academic
to something much more accessible. The shorter sentences and easier diction resemble the
style Swift used in Gulliver’s Travels, and the madness that pervaded the digressions is
nowhere to be found. The persona of the Grubstreet hack has seemingly moved to the
background, and the allegory is told by someone who states that “I shall by no means forget
my character of a historian” (Tale 133). Unlike the modern essayist from the digressions who
has an opinion about everything, the narrator of the story is a non-intrusive historian who lets
the reader interpret his allegory. The differences in both content and style make this the third
major voice in the novel.
The notion of a shift between voices finds evidence in the description of a certain
religious sect. The Historian uses satire to describe the idol of this sect as a tailor who weaves
their universe (Tale 76). In an explanatory note, Swift says that this “is an Occasional Satyr
upon Dress and Fashion” (Tale 76). It seems then, that the Historian does not shy away from
satire, but sometimes uses it to explain or enliven certain parts. Unlike the Historian, the Hack
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does not show any liking for satire in his digressions. Rather, he admits to having “neither a
Talent, nor an Inclination for Satyr” (Tale 53).
6. The Grubstreet Hack
The voice of the Grubstreet Hack is by far the loudest and most pronounced in the
novel. The Hack constantly talks about himself, his surroundings and the achievements of
himself and his companions. Unlike with the Apologist or the Historian, the reader is able to
visualize the Hack and draw a fairly complete character sketch.
The title page already gives the reader an idea of the character of this Grubstreet Hack.
Not only does he write “for the Universal Improvement of Mankind”, but he also feels that
such an improvement has long been greatly desired. 12 Claims like these put the hack in the
camp of the Moderns, whose proponents said the same things about science and many of their
learned dissertations (Speck 80). The arrogance the Hack displays in his claim that mankind
has long needed the improvement he brings is not limited to this single instance. Throughout
A Tale, the Hack underlines his own importance, and that of his fellow modern writers. In “A
Dedication to Prince Posterity”, he names several key figures in the Modern movement,
among whom are Bentley – “a Writer of infinite Wit and Humour” (Tale 37) - and Wotton.
Although the Hack admires these people and their works so much that he wants to write a
large book about the “Wits in our Nation”, his approach for this task is rather ridiculous:
“Their Persons I shall describe particularly, and at Length, their Genius and Understandings
in Mignature” (Tale 38). The Hack feels that he does his friends justice by describing their
physical characteristics rather than their genius, which is just one of many instances of his
unconscious humour.
12
Literally: “Diu multumque desideratum” (title page).
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The Hack’s link to the Moderns is established more than once. Not only does he boast
that he has just become a member of the Grubstreet fraternity (Tale 63), but he also confesses
that he is a “servant of modern forms” (Tale 45) and often groups himself explicitly with the
Moderns by using phrases like “we modern authors” (Tale 123) and [like] “a true modern”
(Tale 135). By firmly establishing this link, Swift creates the situation in which the reader will
project the ideas and actions of the Hack to the Moderns as a group. The Hack represents the
group, and Swift is sure to let him do as many things as possible to ridicule their ideas.
Throughout A Tale, the Hack unwittingly reveals many of his vices. In the
“Introduction”, for example, the Hack analyses three wooden machines that orators can use
when they want to speak to the crowd. Although the hack realizes that the Bar and the Bench
– both devices are used in the legal profession - could also be included, he does not want to
include them. At first, he tries to reason on etymological grounds why these devices should be
excluded from the list, but that does not turn into a strong argument. After this, he says: “But
if no other Argument could occur to exclude the Bench and the Bar from the List of Oratorial
Machines, it were sufficient, that the Admission of them would overthrow a Number which I
was resolved to establish, whatever Argument it might cost me” (Tale 57). In other words, the
bench and the bar have to be excluded from the list because of his intended panegyric upon
the number three. This opportunistic character trait is revealed again when he boasts about
how much he has written: “Four-score and eleven Pamphlets have I written under three
Reigns, and for the Service of six and thirty Factions” (Tale 70). He obviously does not care
who he writes for, but only writes to make money and to boast about it afterwards.
In his writings, he emulates the style of his companions with great attention: “I have
been hitherto as cautious as I could, upon all Occasions, most nicely to follow the Rules and
Methods of Writing, laid down by the Example of our illustrious Moderns” (Tale 92). He
makes sure that his writings, just like those of his companions, feature an abundance of titles,
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and applauds Dryden’s introduction of multiple godfathers, each of whom deserves a
dedication. 13 The Hack is also very confident about the qualities of his own writings, which
he often calls “miraculous treatises” (Tale 184). This self-indulgence is by no means idle
boasting, he says, but rather a means to convince the readers of the qualities of his work,
which is “the Fashion and Humour most applauded by the first Authors of [his] Age” (Tale
130). He has no inclination towards or interest in satire, but prefers panegyrics instead. With
regards to his diction, Mueller argues that “the chaotic text reflects a mind in disarray” and
that the narrator often serves “to illustrate moral and intellectual corruption” (Mueller 211).
Indeed, the Hack’s self-confidence and pretentiousness sometimes border on madness.
Especially in his excessive praise of his own writings he appears to have lost grip on reality.
In “A Further Digression”, the Hack describes how his “miraculous treatise” will produce a
“wonderful revolution” in the notion and opinions of the readers. To fully appreciate his
writings, he argues, every “Prince in Christendom [should] take seven of the deepest Scholars
in his Dominions and shut them up close for seven years” to study his text (Tale 185). Perhaps
stronger evidence of his madness can be found in “A Digression of the Modern Kind”, in
which the Hack talks about the difference between the Moderns and the Ancients. He argues
that the Moderns have eclipsed the Ancients in such a way that people wonder if they have
ever existed. However, he says, some of the methods of the Ancients are still useful. He
describes a method, which he claims originated with Homer, to distil the essence of learned
books by cooking them and sniffing the residue up the nose, revealing a ludicrous trust in
science. This same naïve or mad trust in the possibilities of literature and science is revealed
when he laments the fact that no modern has yet published “an universal System in a small
portable Volume, of all Things that are to be Known, or Believed, or Imagined, or Practised in
13
As Gutchkelch and Smith note, this was very much in vogue in the 17th century. Dryden dedicated his
translation of Virgil to three patrons, while Fuller’s Church History (1655) featured twelve title pages, many
dedications and over fifty inscriptions to benefactors. Sir Balthasar Gerbier’s Counsef and Advise to all Builders
(1663) had no less than forty-one dedicatory epistles.
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Life” (Tale 125). In the same digression he also speaks of how he discovered in Homer’s text
many “gross Errors, which are not to be forgiven by his very Ashes, if by chance any of them
are left” (Tale 127). When he argues how Homer has seemingly read, but very poorly
understood a treatise that was written in the 17th century, his mad logic and terrible sense of
time make him everything but a reliable academic. He acknowledges that he once belonged to
“that honourable Society” of Bedlam, London’s mental hospital, but believes it has made him
a better person, because those people that society deems mad are often the greatest wits of the
nation, responsible for the greatest revolutions.
7. Persona
The portrayal of the Hack as a typical mad Modern, shows how Swift uses a straw
man, or persona, to satirize his own adversaries, their ways, and their values. By creating a
ridiculous and unreliable persona, Swift is able to subvert the words of the Hack and make his
praise have the opposite effect. This chapter will briefly summarize the ongoing critical
debate about Swift’s use of persona. It will highlight several theories and put forward a new
approach to A Tale.
7.1 Critical Debate
Due to its complexity and ambiguous nature, A Tale of a Tub has received a lot of
critical attention. It has become a critical commonplace, especially for more recent critics, that
in certain parts of A Tale, the speaker is a persona who epitomizes the targets of Swift’s satire
(Stout 176). However, critical opinion varies wildly on the question about the extent to which
this persona is used, who he represents, and whether his presence is in any way consistent.
Whereas critics like Levine interpret A Tale as a portrayal of a single satirized persona, whose
presence is consistent throughout the book, other critics like Clark identify more than one
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persona or garb. Higgins underlines Paulson’s claim of a recurring theme of the Gnostic myth
in A Tale: “The satirized putative author of the Tale is made analogous to a Gnostic heretic.
What we formally hear in the Tale is the voice of a heretical, enthusiastical Whig dissent”
(Higgins 104). Mueller does not try to find a linking element between all utterances, but
rather argues that the first step in understanding the persona is to regard him as the shifting
expression of a variety of perspectives (Mueller 2003, 208). Some of these perspectives might
be Swift’s, some of them those of a mad modern essayist and others perhaps those of a
sensible, but pompous pamphleteer. Given the great many stylistic differences and differences
in content that numerous critics have come up with, Paulson’s effort to link every utterance to
a single persona within who consistently writes in the theme of the Gnostic Myth, has proven
to be difficult to defend.
Additionally, there are critics who disregard the idea of persona in A Tale completely.
Stout treats the book as all straight talk from Swift himself, with his voice as satiric speaker
often merging with the voices of his satiric butts, and satiric personification modulating into
self-expression and self-mockery 14 (Stout 184). According to Sams: “the effect of putative
authorship may have been overestimated. … As a matter of fact, the first function of the
putative author is that of establishing a contract with the audience, that is, of the exordium”
(Sams 38). She argues that Swift does not use a persona, but has the audience as the butt of
the satire. Nash also argues that the reader is instrumental to the meaning of the text: “What I
am arguing about Swift’s irony, then, is that it requires the reader to participate actively in the
text’s creation of meaning in a manner that conforms to the meaning being created” (Nash
430).
Yet another reading of A Tale that has been put forward in recent scholarship is that A
Tale is a narrative without an authoritative voice, which sets out to exemplify the inevitable
14
He urges the reader to read satire as one would listen to a conversation: “in ordinary conversation, when an
intelligent friend suddenly utters absurdities in a sober tone, we do not conclude that he has changed his identity
but that he is using deadpan irony” (Stout 179).
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polysemy of writing (Walsh 290). According to this argument, which has post-modern
elements, A Tale should not be viewed as a work, but rather as a text that wilfully pushes the
boundaries of enunciation, born out of Swift’s fear for the transience of all printed texts.
Although readings that deny Swift’s use of persona, or of an authoritative voice
altogether, have their place in the enduring debate about the meaning of A Tale, they are not
without their weaknesses. Not only do they largely disregard the evidence in the text in which
someone who is clearly not Swift admits to be responsible for the text, but they also pay little
attention to the satiric effect that these impersonations have. Additionally, it can be argued
that the thin line Stout draws between satiric personification and merging satiric voices on the
one hand, and persona on the other, is not only mostly irrelevant to the discussion of authorial
evasiveness, but is also of a very arbitrary nature and as such not useful for the purposes of
this essay.
It seems that if there is one thing that all critics agree on, it is that A Tale is a very
complex book that is open to many different interpretations. Although many critics recognize
satire in A Tale, its interpretation differs, again, wildly.
7.2 Merging voices
One of the most difficult aspects of A Tale is that Swift’s use of the voice of the
Grubstreet Hack is not limited to the digressions alone. Not only does the Hack claim to be
responsible for the entire book, but he also appears in parts that feature a different voice than
his. This makes it very difficult to justify treating the digressions and the tale proper as
separate parts, even though their respective voices differ greatly.
An example of this merging of voices can be found just three paragraphs after the
Historian has once more reminded the reader that he is indeed an historian, as opposed to the
essayist Hack, in a paragraph that opens with: “But, here the severe Reader may justly tax me
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as a Writer of short Memory, A Defiency to which a true Modern cannot but of Necessity be a
little subject” (Tale 135). Not only is a short memory something one does not usually link to
an historian, but it also echoes precisely a confession the Hack has made earlier in his
“Digression concerning Criticks”, in which he also complains about the “unhappy shortness
of my Memory” (Tale 92). The suspicion that it is once again the Hack who is talking is
reinforced by him mentioning the true Modern again. After this narrative break, the tale about
the three brothers continues and the Hack moves to the background again. The final part of
the tale proper features a similar insight, when the Historian mentions the “noisy curs” (Tale
189), by which he means the same “true critics” the Hack mentioned earlier in a Digression
concerning Critics. By doing so, Swift purposely establishes yet another link between the
digressions and the tale proper, and suggests once more that – notwithstanding stylistic
differences –the voice of the Historian indeed belongs to the Hack.
Perhaps one of the strongest arguments against interpretations that focus on different
personae and advocate a separate treatment of the digressions and the tale proper, is the
presence of a linking device on the very first page of the book, under “Treatises written by the
same Author”. This list functions as a linking device that joins together various parts of A
Tale, for at the head of the page it is stated that most of them are “mentioned in the following
Discourses” (Speck 82). The Hack is actually right, as he refers in the digressions and
prefatory materials to six of the eleven works in this list, thereby establishing that he is in fact
the “same Author” responsible for these titles. 15
Of these eleven works, two of them are referred to in the tale proper. The first instance
can be found in section VI. The Historian describes how Jack is outraged at Peter’s treatment
of the father’s will and finds new zeal to take up the fight with his brother. Then, suddenly,
15
“A Dissertation upon the Principal Productions of Grubstreet” and “A Panegyrical Essay upon the Number
THREE” are referred to in the Introduction, “A character of the present Set of Wits in this Island” in the
Dedication to Prince Posterity, “A Panegyric Upon the World” and “A Modest Defence of the Proceedings of the
Rabble in all Ages” in the Preface, and “Lectures upon a Dissection of Human Nature” in A Digression of the
Modern Kind.
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the narrative breaks and someone, supposedly the Hack, surfaces and describes this new zeal,
which he thinks “is perhaps the most significant word that hath been ever yet produced in any
language, as I think I have fully proved in my excellent analytical discourse upon that
subject” (Tale 137). A similar reference can be found in section XI. After a description of
how Jack has gone insane, the tale proper breaks up again - supposedly because the
manuscript has been lost, but there is little doubt that these breaks were intentional – and the
Historian continues with an analysis about the history of ears. At the end of this analysis, the
Historian states: “But of this more hereafter in my General History of Ears, which I design
very speedily to bestow upon my public” (Tale 201).
In these instances, the Historian seems to fall out of his role and reveals that he is
indeed the Grubstreet Hack. The fact that even in the parts that stylistically and in terms of
content should belong to another voice than that of the Hack, the Hack makes an appearance,
making it very difficult to argue that there is a different persona at work. Indeed, if all the
voices ultimately link to the same Hack, it does not seem logical that there are multiple
personae. Rather, the Hack, capable of putting on several different guises, seems to be the
only persona in A Tale. Now, if the hack is the only persona, it follows that one of his most
prominent character traits is that he is like a chameleon: able to almost completely change his
appearance at will.
8 Grubstreet
To understand the significance of treating Hack as the only persona in A Tale it is
important to remember that the Hack is not just a hack writer, but a hack writer from
Grubstreet. As is described in chapter five of this essay, the Hack admits to just having been
allowed into a Grubstreet fraternity, praises his fellow hack writers excessively and seems
genuinely proud to be a member of the hack society of Grubstreet. Without any knowledge of
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Grubstreet itself, the modern reader would be tempted to believe that Grubstreet was indeed a
reputable place, or the centre of the Modern movement. However, according Paul Rogers, in
his excellent study of Grubstreet, nothing could be further from the truth.
In his book, Rogers distinguishes between the actual Grubstreet on the one hand, and
its myth and connotations on the other. Following Ian Watt, he defines Grubstreet as a legend,
of which the figurative meaning was based on a vestigial historical truth, which became
increasingly remote and spectral (Rogers 19). Grubstreet entered the language in the
seventeenth century and became a household phrase in Hanoverian England, states Rogers
(Rogers 1). The phrase has since then faded into obscurity, but it still occasionally resurfaces
in works of literary. Although it was an actual street, most people would know of Grubstreet
because of its reputation.
The actual street was renamed in 1830 to Milton Street, which is now almost
completely covered by the Barbican building scheme, and was located east of the Fleet Ditch,
and west of Moorfields and Bedlam. The area of Grubstreet was noisy, squalid, crowded, and
had a very high crime rate. Police were not nearly as present in these areas as they were in the
other parts of London and because of this, many renegades and fugitives took refuge in these
quarters. One of the reasons for the poverty was that Grubstreet and its surroundings were
built on a poor site as the area east of the Fleed Ditch was originally a swamp. The close
proximity of water at the Moorfields made Cripplegate parish notorious for the ague in winter
and the fever or the Black Death in the summer (Rogers 23). The Moorfiels caused the sewers
to flood every now and then, resulting in an outbreak of infections and diseases.
Unsurprisingly, the area of Grubstreet was amongst the areas hardest hit by the Great Plague.
However, with property prices of three or four pounds – compared to the twenty pound prices
for similar properties in the West End – the area was soon as crowded again as it was before.
As it was, Grubstreet was rife with crime, poverty, bad sanitation and had a very bad
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reputation long before it became a household phrase. Or, as Rogers says: “Let no one suppose
it was the literary imagination which brought disgrace to Grubstreet. (Rogers 30)”
Apart from being a place of poverty and a haven for criminals, Grubstreet and its
surroundings were also the habitat for the so named “hack writers”. Hackney, from which the
word “hack” derives, is defined by Johnson’s Dictionary as “hired horse”, “prostitute”, “any
thing let out for hire”, or “much used or common”. “To hack” is defined as “to turn hackney
or prostitute”. The hacks were people whose main or only source of income was their pen.
Rogers estimates that in 1725, there were up to a hundred of these people, with more using
their pen to generate additional income. Because of this dependence on their pen to make
money, combined with the low payments they received for their work, they were in no
position to make any demands with regards to content or message. They wrote whatever the
person who was paying them wanted and often wrote seditious and obscene texts. They wrote
for bordellos and pimps, for politicians and statesmen, and for anyone else who would want
pay them. Because of their oftentimes seditious texts, they lived in constant fear of the law;
most notably the law of libel. This, along with the low pay their received, forced them to live
in the poorer areas of London, where the rent was low and policy surveillance limited.
Rogers argues that the hacks saw themselves as a group, united by the ever present
fear of the law of libel (Rogers 277). They were not only often – rightfully – accused of
piracy, but also lived the life of literary pirates. Notwithstanding their bad reputation, they
were still very active in the world of literature. They generated large amounts of texts,
covering a range of topics, had their own booksellers, their own publishers (among which the
infamous Edmund Curll 16 ) and usually responded fiercely to attacks on their integrity.
16
Edmund Curll (1675 - 1747) was an English bookseller and publisher whose name had become synonymous
with unscrupulous publication and publicity. He rose from poverty to wealth through his publishing, and was
known for his lack of moral guidelines about what to publish. By cashing in on scandals, publishing
pornography, offering up patent medicine, he created a small empire of printing houses. He would publish high
and low quality writing alike, so long as it sold.
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Consequently, the subculture of Grubstreet merged elements of criminal London (deriving
partly from the actual surroundings in which the writers worked, partly from the nature of
their work), with elements of the “literary” subculture of coffeehouses, booksellers’ shops and
theatres (Rogers 291).
8.1 Swift’s enemies
For Swift, the greatest offence of the Grubstreet hacks was that they wrote solely for
money. They had no intention of educating the reader, and could not care less about questions
of morality. They would change their message and their tone to accommodate whoever paid
them. To Swift, this was utterly preposterous. He was a man of principle, who kept fighting a
losing battle in the Ancients versus Moderns debate, kept defending his church in the flood of
new theories and stood by his political beliefs throughout his life. As such, the immoral and
chameleon-like nature of the Grubstreet hacks offended him greatly.
Because of their lawlessness, their seditious texts and their willingness to prostitute
what little talent they had for money, the hacks were often attacked by the great Augustan
writers. Pope, a good friend of Swift’s, wrote the Dunciad, in which he ridicules the hacks in
a description of the empire of Dullness and its inhabitants the Dunces. In this poem, he refers
to Grubstreet and many of adversaries amongst the hacks (or at least, the persons he accused
of being one). He portrays the Dunces not only as laughable and unreliable writers, but also as
destructive non-literary forces. Although he fiercely attacks the Dunces in his poem, the
consensus among critics, according to Rogers, is that for Pope - and also for Swift - literary
disrespect came before personal dislike. Similarly, Tillotson argues that “In Pope’s eye a man,
otherwise inoffensive, might offend through his badness as a writer. For Pope, a bad author
was to literature what a fool or knave was to life. The Dunciad attacks the denizens of
Grubstreet not as men first of all but as authors” (Tillotson 35). To Pope and Swift, any man
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whose interest in literature was solely commercial, did not contribute anything to the art of
literature. Because of the low commissions, such a man would be forced to accept everything
that was offered, and would not be able to conduct the free-ranging search of topics, themes
and styles which Renaissance theory demanded as a prelude to worthwhile imaginative
writing (Rogers 189). As a result of this, they did not produce any material that Swift
considered worthwhile. In a letter to his bookseller about the publication of Curll’s A
Complete Key to the Tale of a Tub, Swift remarks: “I believe it is so perfect a Grub-streetpiece, it will be forgotten in a week. 17 ”
Even disregarding their badness as writers, or their shady and lawless personalities, the
Grubstreet hacks were also important to Swift because he needed identifiable enemies for his
satire to work. If no one of his audience understood who he was referring to, his satire would
likely have gone unnoticed, or unappreciated. Thus, he needed to portray his enemies as
ridiculous and their presence as threatening, but at the same time not make them too
approachable for the reader. In a letter from Swift to Pope, written in 1716, Swift says the
following about his enemies: “And who are all these enemies you hint at? I can only think of
Curl, Gildon, Squire Burnet, Blackmore, and a few others whose fame I have forgot: Tools in
my opinion as necessary for a good writer, as pen, ink, and paper. 18 ” Paradoxically then, his
enemies are both destructive forces to the art of literature, but also useful tools to create art.
9. Grubstreet Hack persona
The Grubstreet Hacks were good targets for satire, because the attacks would not only
make for a good read, but would also damage a group that Swift perceived as a destructive
force in literature. The method Swift uses to ridicule the Hacks in A Tale is complex and
features many layers, but can ultimately be reduced to the key aspect that the proclaimed
17
18
Swift, Correspondence, I, 133, 165.
Pope, Correspondence, I, 358-9.
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author – of the entire text, not just the digressions – is a personified “typical” Grubstreet
Hack. 19 As is described in chapter six of this essay, the Hack is never absent. Although he
changes his voice, style and message between chapters, there are several linking devices that
establish that the Hack is responsible for every chapter in A Tale. There should also be little
doubt that throughout the book, the Hack reveals many of the vices Swift attributed to the
Moderns in general, and the Grubstreet hacks in particular.
Several critics have described how Swift uses satire in the digressions, whereas others
have highlighted the flawed logic of the Hack or have shown how the madness that the Hack
displays in his passage on fools and knaves in a Digression on Madness is typical of the
Hack’s nature. However, Swift’s greatest satirical vehicle arguably lies not in the content of
certain passages, but in the book as a whole. Chapter six ended with the conclusion that if it
logically follows that the Hack is the only persona in the book, he must be a literary
chameleon, able to change his tone of voice whenever he wants. In light of the history of
Grubstreet, the hacks, and how they prostituted what little literary talent they had for money,
it is not surprising that the Hack does exactly this. As described in chapter six, the Hack feels
no shame in admitting that he has no political loyalty whatsoever, and simply does not care
about whom he writes for: “Four-score and eleven Pamphlets have I written under three
Reigns, and for the Service of six and thirty Factions” (Tale 70). The fact that he is a
chameleon; that he is able to change his voice whenever it suits him, and that this all leads to
a complex book that has little to no moral depth, only reinforces Swift’s views that the
Moderns and hacks of his world produce a lot of words, but no lasting art. If A Tale is
regarded as a single piece of work, written by someone who writes for money and who is not
guided by morality or a desire to produce a piece of art, its stylistic inconsistency and
confusing message are then an important part of the satire – and ultimately the message - of
19
This was suggested to the author of this essay by Dr. Paul Gabriner.
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the book. Indeed, following this interpretation, the change of voice from Hack to Historian is
then not so much a change of persona, but merely evidence of the Hack changing his voice to
adapt to the change of content. Just as the Grubstreet hacks would transform to whatever it
was the commissioner of the text wanted, the Hack is able to transform from an erratic lunatic
to a solemn storyteller.
That he does not completely transform but occasionally pops up, serves more than one
purpose. The first is that it allows the reader to see that the same lunatic now apparently uses
another voice, and the second is to suggest that the Hack is simply not able to fully transform,
and still has to throw in an arrogant remark every now and then. By not letting the Hack
completely transform, Swift underlines once more that the Hacks were poor even at what they
did best. Additionally, the constant transformations of the Hack can function as a reminder to
the reader that the real Grubstreet hacks do this as well, further establishing the links between
the Hack and the hacks while making the satire more obvious.
9.1. Problems
Having argued that the Hack is the only persona, mimicking the chameleon Grubstreet
hacks, a number of problems remain. The first is that a large part of the book, the tale proper,
is a seemingly serious, albeit somewhat simplistic, allegory that defends Swift’s church. If an
obviously flawed modern Hack can so easily adapt to the style of an historian to produce a
sensible allegory that defends something that was very dear to Swift’s, he might not be so
ridiculous after all. A similar problem presents itself when the argument is applied to the
“Apology”. Critics like Mueller have shown how the voice in the “Apology” is remote, the
text written in the third person, and how the apology itself might be regarded as a piece of
satire written to ridicule those readers who completely misunderstood the text, rather than as a
sincere apology. The feigned shock at the outrage and misunderstanding seems completely
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out of place for someone like Swift, argues Mueller, who concludes that the Apology is a
piece of subtle irony. Just as with the tale proper, it is therefore difficult to see why the Hack
should be responsible for the text, having shown no aptitude for either subtle irony, or
sensible allegories in the other parts of the book. Similarly, if the Apology is indeed another
instance of the Hack writing whatever is asked of him, why would he condemn his peers this
violently: “If the clergy’s resentment lay upon their hands, in my humble opinion they might
have found more proper objects to employ them on … I mean those heavy, illiterate
scribblers, prostitute in their reputations, vicious in their lives, and ruined in their fortunes,
who, to the shame of good sense as well as piety, are greedily read merely upon the strength
of bold, false, impious assertions mixed with unmannerly reflections upon the priesthood, and
openly intended against all Religion” (Tale 3).
There seems to be no easy answer to these questions, but the fact that both instances
see the Hack “defending” an author or a religion for which he has no sympathy at all, hints at
the willingness of the Grubstreet hacks to write anything as long as they are paid. Born out of
necessity, but also out of a complete lack of morals and integrity, they would not shy away
from an assignment to defend a system that caused them to live in Grubstreet, or to defend the
person who so violently ridicules them. Consequently, they must not just be worthless as
writers, but also as human beings, lacking even the smallest of backbone. The satire in having
the persona of the Hack defend someone he hates while ridiculing his own peers, displaying a
complete lack of morals at the same time, is thus not only subtle, but also very brutal.
9.2. Satire and Sub-themes
At one point in the Apology, the Apologist claims that “there generally runs an Irony
through the Thread of the whole Book, which the Men of Tast will observe and Distinguish,
and which will render some objections that have been made, very weak and insignificant”
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(Tale 8). Although this thread of Irony in A Tale is perhaps not too difficult to find, it is very
hard to fully understand its many layers. Not only does Swift show the follies and
opportunism of the Hack throughout the text, but he also lures the reader into treating the
Hack as representing the Moderns as a whole. As Wood argues, “satire’s power of persuasion
thus stems from a ‘personality’ consistently, or gradually felt to be, in the wrong; we lose trust
in what the persona signifies and thus embrace its implied opposite” (Wood 43). The narrator
himself often serves to illustrate intellectual and moral corruption. The chaotic text, argues
Mueller, reflects a mind in disarray (Mueller 211). Additionally, the structure of A Tale, with
its many digressions and prefatory items, ridicules a practice that was common with the
Moderns.
The persona of the Hack adds another layer to the satire. Not only has he revealed in
his digressions that is by no means a man of principle, and that he would write for anyone
about anything, but he also actually puts this into practice by being the putative author of the
entire book. The end result is an, at times, poorly written, inconsistent and chaotic text with
no real moral value, which are the same characteristics Swift accused the modern hacks of
having. Thus, the characteristics of the Hack are revealed in the content of the text, but also in
its structure. Swift not only impersonates and ridicules the Hack in the digressions, but also
shows the worth of writers like him by writing what Rogers calls “a deliberately bad book”
(Rogers 69).
The implications for the meaning of A Tale as whole, or the presence of sub-themes
within the book, are plenty. One the possibilities is that, with A Tale, Swift shows what
happens when the author takes a step back and does not intrude or clarify the text, but rather
lets the interpretation of the words entirely up to the reader. Or, as McCrea argues: “Swift’s
art continually asserts its status as an object in need of interpretation, and interpretation only
by the best and brightest, not by mere pedants like Wotton” (McCrea 62). The need for a wise
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and guiding author started to be felt less and less throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth
century, and not everyone saw this as a positive trend. In A Tale, there are only the words and
the reader, and the only one to make sense of the words for the reader is the Hack. With A
Tale, Swift might be toying with this concept by introducing a mad persona, merging voices
and an “explanatory” “Apology” that raises more questions than it answers. The question
what happens to a text, the intention of the writer, and – remembering Swift’s views on the
importance of morals in literature – the world as a whole, when a text lacks an agent to guide
the readers, is then perhaps a sub-theme A Tale. 20 If this is so, Swift’s opinion seems to be
that a guiding intermediary who highlights the moral lessons that are implicit in the text for
the readers is essential for a work of literature. If there is no such agent, or if he is
marginalized to a great extent, what follows is a text such as A Tale.
Using similar arguments, Woods suggests that authority over printed words is another
sub-theme within A Tale. He argues that the printing press took away a large part of the power
over words that speakers normally have. Unlike in conversations, the author of a written work
has no power to retract, qualify and employ physical indicators to create a text. In “living”
speech, but also in the more personal contact between writer and reader that the pen and one’s
long hand script invites, the speaker can clarify and refine his/her concepts in response to an
identifiable audience. The printing press takes away that possibility, placing the daunting task
of interpretation solely on the reader. Woods argues: “Communication is a desperately
vulnerable quality once it becomes a commodity” (Woods 39). With the Apology, Swift
shows how the Apologist deploys several dubious arguments to acquit himself of full
authorial responsibility. One of these arguments is that the text has not been authorised,
another is that “Those who had the Papers in their Power” had censored parts of the text
because it “had something in it of Satyr” (Tale 4). The Apologist also laments the fact that the
20
This was suggested to the author of this essay by Prof. Dr. Roger Eaton.
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earlier versions had less hiatuses than the published versions. Woods sees this as another
instance of Swift highlighting the effects of the printing-press. As with any aspect of A Tale,
there is plenty of room to allow for several different readings and sub-themes. That one of
them is the lack of a personal relationship between reader and writer, or the absence of a
guiding author, would indeed seem very plausible in light of Swift’s extensive play with
structure, persona, and reader expectations in A Tale.
10. Conclusion
There are plenty of reasons to distinguish between two distinctly different texts within
Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub. As the opening chapters of this essay have shown, one of
these texts - the tale proper - was born out of a desire to defend Swift’s church from the
perceived threats of Catholicism and Puritanism, whereas the incentive for the other text – the
digressions and prefatory material, and the Battle of the Books – was to ridicule the Moderns
and their threatening new approach to literature. Apart from these differences in background
and content, there are also great stylistic differences between the two parts. The tale proper is
a sober text that is easy to read and resembles the style Swift would later use in his Gulliver’s
Travels. Contrastingly, the language and diction in the digressions and prefatory material is
chaotic and erratic, showing signs of the Hack’s madness. On top of that, it has proven to be
very difficult for critics to find unity or a common theme in the character of this Hack
persona, or in the book altogether. This has led many critics to forego trying to bind every
aspect of A Tale together. Consequently, most of the critical debate about A Tale focuses on
key passages, or about Swift’s use of persona in a broader sense.
This essay argues that it is not only possible to read and interpret A Tale as a single
text, but that it is instrumental to understanding Swift’s satire in the novel. The binding
element in the interpretation is the Hack as a stable persona. His shifting identity, his
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madness, his chameleon-like qualities and his complete lack of morals, all add up to a satiric
impersonation of a typical member of a group of people he saw as a destructive force in
literature; the Grubstreet Hacks. Just like them, the Hack in A Tale changes his tone of voice
whenever that is required of him. He effortlessly changes from apologist to essayist to
historian and back, without any moral inhibitions, revealing his worthlessness as a writer and
as a person at the same time. The end result - A Tale as a whole – is very complex, has little to
no moral depth, and is self-contradictory on numerous occasions. Although the writer
constantly tries to convince everyone of his greatness, his work is ironically as flawed as he
is. Paradoxically, it is exactly this “badness” that makes A Tale a brilliant piece of satire. It
urges the reader to search for the “Irony that runs through the Thread of the whole Book”, to
be a “Man of Tast” for having found it, only to realize that there is another layer underneath,
and another. Indeed, as a work of satire A Tale succeeds on so many levels, and allows for so
many different interpretations, that it can be read and studied over and over again, as it
undoubtedly will.
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