Jonathan Swift and Popular Culture Myth, Media and the Man: Myth, Media, and the Man

by A. Kelly

Overview

Ann Kelly's provocative book breaks the mold of Swift studies. Twentieth century Swift scholars have tended to assess Jonathan Swift as a pillar of the eighteenth-century 'republic of letter', a conservative, even reactionary voice upholding classical values against the welling tide of popularization in literature. Kelly looks at Swift instead as a practical exponent of the popular and impressario of the literary image. She argues that Swift turned his back on the elite to write for a popular audience, and that he annexed scandals to his fictionalized print alter ego, creating a continual demand for works by or about this self-mythologized figure. A fascinating look at print culture, the commodification of the author, and the history of popular culture, this book should provoke lots of discussion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312239596
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	05/13/2002
Edition description:	2002
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

ANN CLINE KELLY has been writing on Jonathan Swift for thirty years. She is Professor of English at Howard University, and is author of Swift and the English Language (U. Penn). She also appeared in a recent documentary on Gulliver's Travels broadcast by The Discovery Channel/The Learning Channel as part of their Great Books Series.

Table of Contents

Introduction Trial and Error: 1690-1711 The Master of Surprises: 1711-1728 Intimations of Immortality: 1729-45 Unconventional Sex, Love, and Marriage: Swift as Liberated Lover Punishment for Nonconformity: The Tragic Swift Rude, Nasty, Obscene: Swift as the Comic Imp of the Perverse The Devil Made a Saint: Swift as Epic Hero Epilogue: Life Ever-Lasting?

Editorial Reviews

'Kelly's literate and enjoyable style makes her work accessible and interesting to undergraduates and specialists alike.' - Choice

'Kelly's is a provocative but a very convincing thesis, the more attractive for its freedom from academic jargon. She has clearly profited from later twentieth-century critical theory, but is very effective in the use she makes of older insights from psychological and folklore commentators; and both her command of the demotic ephemera of Swift's day and of the bye-ways of anglophone popular culture in the two and a half centuries since his death are exemplary of Swift scholarship at its finest, of a sort we have rarely seen for decades.' - Robert Mahoney, Irish Studies Review

From the Publisher

A long-time specialist on the Anglo-Irish writer, Kelly (English, Howard U.) explores how Swift (1667-1745) chose popular literature rather than high-culture genres as his medium, and used it to created himself as a myth during his own lifetime. She notes the apparent contradiction of using ephemeral themes and works to achieve a fame that has outlasted many of his peers. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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