Swift and Pope
S07
Christopher Miller
We will approach the 18th century at its most brilliant and most savage, in the persons of the two greatest satirists in the language: Alexander Pope, whom Auden credited with the best ear of any English poet, and Jonathan Swift, whose vision of the world grew so scabrous that most people know his most famous book, Gulliver’s Travels, only in expurgated versions—and the unexpurgated one has convinced such critics as Johnson and Thackeray that Swift was insane when he wrote it. We will also read Swift’s Drapier’s Letters, A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books, and various pamphlets and poems. As for Pope, we read The Essay on Criticism, The Essay on Man, The Rape of the Lock, The Moral Essays, and parts of Peri Bathous and The Dunciad. We also read a smattering of Dryden, and eavesdrop on the table talk of the formidable Dr. Johnson.