Talk:A Tale of a Tub

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Former featured article A Tale of a Tub is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
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Contents

[edit] Author working anonymously wrote...

Author working anonymously on Oct. 15, 2004 wrote,

"Swift's digressions are interesting and notable for the nebulousness surrounding their purpose. Some have thought of them as Swift's test for the reader, for instance in assessing how prone the reader is to overfiguratively reading into the ludicrous episode on ears. Others have dismissed their content as nonsense altogether, merely a deliberate and ironic indulgence in self-importance in a bid to blast human vanity."

I reworded and removed that to some degree, and I wanted to explain why.
First, I tried to capture the essence of the comment in the paragraph that I wrote in. Secondly, although I understand the general point, I have never heard anyone dismiss the contents of the digressions entirely, and I'd really like to meet (in print or person) anyone who does so. Each of the Digressions has a purpose and a function in an overall attack on the New Man. I see it as a single purpose, but some, like Ehrenpreis, see it as a bunch of different virtuoso pieces on different topics that aren't related. However, there is a liminal and subliminal text present in each Digression. The liminal texts are puzzles that break on purpose, but the subliminal text (the "we clever people" text that the "wit" reader is supposed to get) is, I think, very much rational.
If I have done any injustice in the rewording and removal, I apologize and invite further work. Geogre 22:36, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi. Could you add references to this article? I'd very much like to nominate it on WP:FAC. Filiocht 15:14, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)

Wow. Sure. Let me think. I've studied this particular book for so long and so thoroughly that by now my bibliography is kind of "Everything written on the subject in English 1785-1995," but I'll absolutely offer up the key points, the Ehrenpreis I mention, the 1920 Guthkelch and Smith, perhaps Swift's Skull and other high points of Tale scholarship. I think I can even obtain a title page facsimile so that there's an image. Let me check on that. Geogre 17:33, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Ok, Bibliography (not the best, but some stuff I've read) added. I can get a title page reproduction. I have one. (I used to actually own a 3rd edition of the book, from 1704, but I sold it.) Now to plug in the scanner and enter into the forbidding world of uploading images. Geogre 18:09, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Done! Woo-hoo! I appreciate the nomination, Filiocht. Geogre 01:03, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
My pleasure. Filiocht 07:27, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

Like the new images very much, by the way. Filiocht 15:12, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] "Temple household"?

What is the "Temple household"? Paul August 14:07, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

Ok, having read further, I now know ;-) But perhaps my question indicates a problem. Paul August 14:15, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
It's one of those things.... If I explain it in detail, a long article gets longer. The thing is, one assumes, to some degree, that anyone coming to this book (not this article) knows a few things about Swift. I did try to explain them in the text, but I didn't explain as much as I could have. Since we're here, though, I'd like to point out something that is stated in the article but not made entirely explicit: Swift was ordained, but that didn't mean he had a place to be a priest, as "places" were still under the authority of their local temporal authorities. Some churches were at the dispensation of the church, but those were taken. If you wanted the parish of Kilroot, you needed the local nobleman who owned that land to hire you. Swift went to work for Temple in hopes that Temple would pull strings among the nobility to get Swift a "good living" -- a parish on private lands that would pay well and put him in a good place, geographically.
Now, the Tale is a blow delivered in one of Temple's battles, and Swift had been Temple's secretary. It was natural for people to figure that this means that Swift was Temple's buddy. The landmark biography of Swift done by Irvin Ehrenpreis confirmed this. The problem is that no one (and not Ehrenpreis) had information on life at Moor Park. Swift never spoke of it, and Temple didn't, either. The only time he did, he said, in code to Stella, "he nearly ruined me."
A. C. Elias, an independent scholar, has been working on getting into that household and finding out what went on. He took the revolutionary position that Temple treated Swift with haughtiness and that Swift resented Temple, who was clearly Swift's intellectual inferior. He did a lot to prove that Swift really, really didn't like Temple at the time of his departure. We all know that Swift liked some of the women in the household (Ester Johnson, aka "Stella," in particular), but also that he really didn't like at least one of them (Lady Giffard).
The only reason this matters for the Tale is that Ehrenpreis speculated on the circumstances of the composition of the Tale. He imagined Swift reading bits of it aloud (the digression) as separate compositions. He imagined Swift writing a series of parodies as entertainments for the family. There was no evidence of that, but it seemed logical to him. Elias argues that Swift may have composed the Digressions separately, but he wasn't doing them to entertain the Temple household (where he did do the Meditation Upon a Broomstick for Stella). I.e. is the book made of a number of impersonations of different authors or as a single madman narrator? On such shaky foundations are large critical approaches based. Geogre 01:17, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Successful FAC

Yes, I know I have one nomination here already, but this is not a self-nom, all I did was to add a picture. A very complete article about a very important book. Filiocht 07:26, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

  • Support Mpolo 08:41, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)
  • Object. This article needs copyediting, references, and de-POVing. Some samples: "For us, religious tolerance seems automatically virtuous", "It is too much to hope to provide much historical background", " Although many critics have followed Ehrenpreis in arguing that there is no single, consistent narrator in the work, this position is difficult to maintain.". Such sentences can be found throughout the article, from the lead section to even the discussion of the references. In particular, the "authorship question" section is biased. Instead of trying to convince the reader, it should present the facts, and mention what the generally accepted opinion is. In addition to this, there are some problems with the tense of sentences (facts from the past are represented as in the present). Jeronimo 11:22, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • I'm afraid we seem to be reading this article through radically different eyes. Filiocht 14:04, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)
    • Umm, Jeronimo, I don't what I can say except that there are references, and what you think of as POV is really a report on multiple criticis, i.e. a summary of critical opinion. There aren't very many critical works in English written between 1780 and 1985 on the Tale that I haven't read. As for the references section, there is one. When it says "some have followed Ehrenpreis," you can find Irvin down there at the bottom of the page. I had even toyed with making it an annotated bibliography, where each work was not merely listed, but actually discussed in terms of its point of view. Won't say I'm an expert on much, but Tale of a Tub I am. Geogre 14:28, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Also, when I had references with an explanation of what parts of the works (these are all book-length studies) contributed to the article, Jeronimo considered that POV and bad language? Huh? As for the Authorship Debate, these are the facts. The style is in keeping with Swift's other works. Thomas Swift has left only a few sermons and one satire. That's persuasion? That's a report. Finally, the "mix of tense" is literary present. It's necessary in writing about literature to say, "Ahab pursues the whale" rather than "And then the guy chased the whale." When one is discussing the book as an artifact, one uses the past tense ("It was published in 1704"), but when one discusses the action within the fiction, one uses the present ("The putative author misunderstands metaphors, seeing them as literal truths"), unless there is a previous contrastive fictional action ("Although the author admits to being insane, he earlier stated that he was a retired member of Parliament"). More images have been added to the article now -- one woodcut from the original, a title page of the first and fifth editions. Geogre 21:23, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Well there are strong statements, that if not cited, are POV. For ex. "Stylistically and in sentiment, the Tale is undeniably Jonathan's". There is no possibility someone else wrote it? Does not a single researcher still believe it is possible someone else wrote it? If so, that needs to be stated and cited. The claims in the entire 'Authorship debate' section need inline citations. For example (Ehrenpreis, pp 221-223). That type of citation will solve the POV issue. - Taxman 18:17, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
Seriously? No, no one currently believes that anyone but J. Swift wrote it. The debate died out in the 19th c., and, as I indicated, the argument is now viewed by scholars as a political one. As I said in the article, we tend now to see people who wanted Thomas Swift to have written it as Whig enemies of J. Swift's Tory views. It was still a politically active text as late as the turn of the 20th c., so people who had a particular point of view wanted to cut it or include it in J. Swift's works. That I even included the authorship debate is just a sign of inclusiveness, because it's a long dead debate; I was trying to be historically accurate by saying that there was one. As for inline references, it would be virtually impossible. How can I say this carefully? Um, the work just is like Swift's other works and not like Thomas Swift's works. Ehrenpreis is too late to even consider the debate. The last person I know of to even bother with it was Sutherland in 1910. The information on the debate cames from Arthur Cash (not cited because he's a lunatic and not someone I'd recommend to a general reader wishing greater information on the Tale in general) and from the Guthkelch and Smith apparatus, which is cited. I had originally even indicated that the Guthkelch and Smith is useful primarily as the authoritative text, but then people thought that was POV, too. I don't know what, besides my Ph.D. with a concentration on Augustan satire and my Master's thesis being on the Tale of a Tub, can possibly convince you guys that my opinion on this matter is not a POV one but, rather, an accurate representation of scholarly consensus. Let me put it this way: I urge objectors to find a single dissenting opinion on anything but the persona point of view taken in the article. Geogre 18:27, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
That's not the point. Wikipedia is not original research. Just because you know a lot about it, doesn't mean you can make claims that are not cited to someone else. Wikipedia is a secondary source. Indicating one source as the primary reference is POV, but citing a statement to a particular work is not. Just because people pointed out you cited sources inccorrectly before does not mean the article should not be properly cited. If no one seriously considers it a valid debate, simply state that and cite it. But "the Tale is undeniably Jonathan's" is very simply a POV without citation. By the way, my example citation above was simply that, an example to show how to cite a claim to help avoid POV. - Taxman 18:40, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
What on earth has Wikipedia is not original research got to do with this article? Filiocht 08:48, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
Read the above and below comments and that link. He is making very strong statements and his justification for them is that he knows the subject very well and that the follow up statements prove the point. The link specifically was for the point "Specific factual content is not the question. Wikipedia is a secondary source (one that analyzes, assimilates, evaluates, interprets, and/or synthesizes primary sources)". But Geogre feels that he does not need to cite sources to specific facts because they are correct. They may be, but that is not the point. The article makes way too many claims without citation to specific sources. - Taxman 16:47, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
Taxman, I can't see any way that there is original research here. The "Authorship Debate" had a citation before I just changed it. It said, "Anyone seeking more information should look at the Guthkelch and Smith," meaning that there is a lot of nauseating detail there (exactly who thought TS wrote it, which pre-1920 scholars argued this way and that). So it wasn't original research even then. Now, there's no way it is. Secondly, the other "strong statements" had references, too. They didn't have page numbers for their references, because, at this point, it's been too many years for me to go get a note on exactly where. However, the critical trends were fairly represented and evenly portrayed. Since there is a bibliography, and since there are inline references to the sources, whether you think the statements are strong or not, they are referenced. That's why, in exasperation, I asked for any evidence of anyone out there who disagrees with the portrait I gave of the reaction to the work. If anyone reading this is on a university campus, please ask any professor of 18th c. literature to look at the article. There is only one thing in the whole of the long article that is cutting edge research, and that's the material derived from Elias. Only people who specifically study this particular work will have encountered that. I avoided genre arguments, any presentation of what the text argues for or against (except what everyone agrees upon), and only presented one view else that might require up to date reading, and that is McKeon's view that Swift represents a radical skeptical reaction to naive empiricism (it's part of his dialectic of literary history in the 18th c., which is a Marxist view; the deconstructionists and such don't dirty their hands with history), and that's cited both inline and in the bibliography. Geogre 00:23, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Look, it's not original research. It's scholarship. There is a big difference. By the way, if you read the Authorship Debate section again, you'll see that "The work is undeniably Jonathan's" is followed by proof of that. Why is it undeniably his? Well, first because it matches his prose style. Second, because Thomas Swift, the other supposed author, was not a writer (left only a few sermons and one short satire). Third, because the narrative pose is in keeping with all later works by Jonathan. That sentence is a thesis that is then proven by citation to 1. Swift's works, 2. Thomas Swift's works, 3. Swift's style. That's citation! Now, I'd far rather have an annotated bibliography, because scholarship on the Tale is really gnarled. It's a work that people say widely divergent things about. A recent survey of professors of 18th c. literature revealed that a minority teach the work now because "it's too difficult." I.e. it's a very complex work, so critics say the darnedest things about it. Note that I avoided very studiously getting into the contents or what the book "means." I avoided that because saying anything there would have been original research. My views are not minority. There is only one view I hold that is out of fashion (or was, when I was training...don't know how things have gone since), and I very clearly indicated sources there. Geogre 22:26, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I see now that not all of my examples are equally good, and my problem with the tenses must have come from somewhere else; I can't recall seeing that in this article. However, I still stand by my opinion. As an example, the sentence "this position is difficult to maintain" (slightly refactored since my original objection) is not NPOV. If all other critics, or even the majority of critics find this difficult to maintain, write that. It is an opinion, so it should be presented as such. I fully agree with TAxman on the authorship section: if it is the belief of all contemporary historians that Swift wrote it himself, just write that (and adding in a specific reference shouldn't be easy either).
Two notes: 1) I can agree that writing totally NPOV about a work of literature is close to impossible, since everybody has a different opinion about it. Still, I think this article could get close to being NPOV with just a little work. 2) Apart from the NPOV/references, this is good article, and I would support it but for those two issues. Jeronimo 19:29, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Ok, it's hard to cite, beyond the citation I already did, that no one says that T.S. wrote it because that's establishing a negative. What I did was establish when people did think he wrote it. I can go into more detail there, but it's just not an opinion anyone has anymore. The "position being difficult to maintain" was the same as above: proof offered after the statement. It's difficult to maintain because the author makes statements about himself that reflect a unified personality. Also, the other side of that issue, that each digression is an entirely different narrator, was offered up fairly and fully, with an indication of who said it. The reason why this position is now out of date (it came about in the early 1960's, so a generation of professors was trained with it) was also given, in that A. C. Elias proved pretty well in the 1980's that Ehrenpreis's chummy view of Swift at Moor Park was wrong (and Elias is cited). The persona theory began to weaken in the 1980's independently of Elias, with scholars saying, "I don't know how it can't be a bunch of impersonations that are all alike" (what I say), which is a shade away from what (rejected) scholars used to say, which is "the character of the Hack author." Ehrenpreis requires the Tale to have been written as an oral performance in the Temple household. The biography Ehrenpreis wrote is great, wonderful, and monumental, but on this the information he used was awful. Ehrenpreis's portrait of Swift's public life is still solid, but his picture of Moore Park was dreadful, and Elias has been chipping away since. Swift at Moor Park showed that Swift was not friends with Temple, was treated like a servant, and felt like a servant. (Is it really necessary to go through all of this here to show you the material I was eliding for the article? Would it have been better in a long article to have expanded? Presenting the persona theory as truth is POV. Presenting the Hack as truth is POV. I present both. That's NPOV. I say that the persona theory is difficult to maintain because it has been difficult to maintain: it's losing ground every day because it was based on a biography that used bad sources for the early years, and the text was always at variance with it.) Geogre 22:26, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
New material added to address objection in the "Authorship Debate" section. I have referred to Guthkelch and Smith's dismissal of the authorship debate and tried to explain how it arose in the first place. It is a conclusion to say that it contined through Scott and Thackery to say that it reflected their critical preference, but it isn't a definitive statement about their motives. The matter of the persona theory (each parody being a separate impersonation) has not been substantially altered because I stand by my position that I was reporting the evolution of critical responses and views of the work rather than injecting a POV about what is the truth of the text. Geogre 03:56, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I appreciate the amount of attention given to my objection, but apparently I stand alone in my opinion, and it seems like I will be unable to convince anyone else. Seeing that the article already has sufficient support to get featured even with my objection, I suggest to end this debate. Jeronimo 14:53, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Support; a really comprehensive explanation of an historic and important literary work. Giano 11:39, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Support. I do not understand Jeronimo's objection. Anárion 14:31, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Support. Interesting read. Zerbey 14:58, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Neutral. Could be a little clearer, needs link to Gutenberg text. Dunc|☺ 15:05, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • I have added a link to PG. Filiocht 15:09, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)
  • Support. Neat! jengod 21:02, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)
  • Support, an article to make Wikipedians proud of their project. Jeronimo's problem with the perfectly standard use of tenses must throw a dubious light on his/her other objections.--Bishonen 21:59, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Wait. I didn't nominate it. I did write the article. Does this mean I can vote? Support: I think it's the best article I've written on Wikipedia. In fact, it's the factual content of the lectures I used to give on the work. Geogre 01:26, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Support! This is outstanding material, outstanding treatment, the Wikipedia of the future... until we start breaking it into short articles, separating out each subsection, like a fool unravelling a sweater... Wetman 12:54, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Support: definitely informative and well written. -- [[User:Bobdoe|BobDoe]] 23:34, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Support - not objections, but can the text be copied to wikisource from Gutenburg? And why are there both Category: 18th century and Category: 1700s? -- ALoan (Talk) 15:58, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • The latter was pure ignorance in using categories on my part. I'll fix it straight off. Don't know about putting it on Wikisource, as I've never done much with Wikisource. It's a pretty substantial, novel-length, work, but it would be great if we did have it about. Anything that gets it more readers is cool by me. Geogre 16:38, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Support. — David Remahl 21:45, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Support. If only more literature articles were this good. Gdr 21:54, 2004 Oct 21 (UTC)
  • Didn't I already vote for this? Support. func(talk) 21:22, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Hobbes

Swift's antipathy for Hobbes' modernity (specifically, his absolutism, psychology and distrust of the anglican church) is well-known and prevalent throughout his various works. The basis in the article for the ambiguity seems to tendentiously reading too much into an analogy that was delivered by the satirical persona, not by Swift speaking candidly. If there's any serious scholarship that runs against all common-sense and the traditional interpretation, please cite your source and make changes accordingly, otherwise I can only attribute it to wishful thinking.

All that I can say is that I am astonished by your misreading of what the article says. The article does not say that Swift isn't against Hobbes. It says that the Hack's explicit statement that his book will placate the Leviathan is a sign of his inability to think or write properly, for the actual book will not in any way counter Hobbes. If you believe that A Tale of a Tub is a valid counter-argument to Leviathan, then you are the only one in history to have done so. On the level of the fiction and digressions themselves, the book says absolutely nothing that counters either materialism or the Hobbesian notion of power.
So, before you go changing sentences you misread, I'd like to see you argue (since it's every scholar agreeing with you), how either the allegory or the digressions successfully counters Leviathan. Otherwise, I will restore my sentence, which only says that Swift invokes Hobbes, dislikes Hobbes, but writes a book that does not seriously keep the Leviathan busy. Geogre 09:48, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
I did not misread "so Swift may be as much supporting as dashing at Hobbes" which is completely baseless, nor did I assert that the effort of the hack to placate the leviathan was not meant to be futile, or fatuous, only that it takes incredibly torturous reasoning to construe this as a sign of Swift's tacit support for Hobbes, against all other indications. There is no problem with the article as it is written now, but it should still be clarified that while Swift certainly did not support the madman in his enterprise, neither he was a proponent or even remotely supportive of Hobbes or his followers.
Sorry, but I thought it was obvious in the article and would be obvious to any reader that Swift constructs a Hack or authorial voice whose version of materialism is to think that light speech floats and serious words fall and that these are not Swift's own views. Swift's author says that wars are caused by the king's vapors and endorses them; I do not think many would think that Swift agrees. However, I think it's equally unlikely that anyone would suspect that a flawed allegory of the three brothers will divert the materialists or Hobbesians. For that matter, it was Swift's habit throughout his satires to make a situation worse, to overstate it, to provoke the sane and virtuous readers to respond. I'm not sure how wrong, therefore, it is to say that Swift's book ends up supporting Leviathan as much as it dashes it: it is an equal matter because Swift the man is not interested in answering questions for anyone, especially in A Tale of a Tub. Geogre 10:51, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
So now we're down to playing on asinine semantic quibbles? Technically, yes, Swift is as much supporting as "dashing at" Hobbes, as it's a McGuffin and he's doing neither. It is not however "obvious to any reader" short of a telepath that this was a needlessly ambiguous and convoluted way of saying that it's meant as a satire of the authorial persona emblematic of modernism and not a constructive critique of Hobbes, and would instead leave them with the (mistaken) impression that Swift's opinion of Hobbesian philosophy was essentially neutral, or unknown. But it's moot, anyway.
And I suspect the interpretation in the current edit is still not what Swift intended, which would have been primarily to mock even the notion that a Leviathan even existed, and if one did, the vanity and arrogance of modernists such as Hobbes in believing they could divert it with their political projects and schemes. Swift had no more interest in depicting or "intensifying" the perceived problems in society than solving them.

What a foolish thing to think and say! The process of narrative parody as Swift practiced it was always to reiterate the enemy's position in such a way that the reader had to recognize its weaknesses. I can't believe anyone who has read more than one work of his would suggest that Swift was not interested in presenting the materialist case in an exaggerated form. As for "semantic games," it is purely straight semantic meaning, and it's important. The absence of a normative value is central to Swift's invention as a satirist. If you see some sort of positive statement of ideals in his satirical works, then you're the one playing necrotelepath. (Or is it that you believe that there were innocent invocations specifically of the word "Leviathan" in political and religious writing in 1696? If so, I'd welcome your showing me two others. Or is it that you believe that Swift was sloppy in mentioning the Leviathan but not having the brains to follow up? Or do you believe that he was not in control of his puppet?) Absurd. Geogre 23:29, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think I've ever seen anyone miss the point so entirely. You (or whomever is responsible for the current edit) are the only one seeing a affirmative statement of Swift's in the allegory- that he believes, like the madman, that a Leviathan exists and needs diverting. The Leviathan was a modernist construct and Swift would have considered it utter nonsense, neither a danger that needed to be underscored nor a danger that needed to be diverted. The madman considers it gospel and erroneously (to Swift) believes that it poses an impending danger and vainly believes that he can deflect it. It is a wheel within a wheel, and you see only the innermost one. I don't know how much simpler I can make it than that.

And the necrotelepathy increases! You know that Swift, alone among his peers, was unconcerned with Hobbes. Alone among his peers in the church, alone among his peers in the conservative Whigs or the nascent Tories, alone among his friends, alone among the group at Moor Park, Swift thought that it was such obvious folderol that he didn't need to address it. No doubt he felt the same of Locke? Fantastic that you are deducing his intent not from a lack of reference, but, in fact, from an explicit reference! I'd love to see your reasoning through A Modest Proposal: No doubt Swift thought the problems of poverty were so obvious that one needn't mention them, and we just haven't yet found his writing "ars gratis artis." Geogre 14:29, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Your seemingly pathological need to put words in my mouth aside, the facile interpretation of the leviathan as Hobbes rather than Hobbes' leviathan quickly manifests several problems:
  • While Swift was by no means unconcerned with Hobbes and his followers (indeed, why else would he have bothered to write A Tale of a Tub?) he did not consider them an onrushing juggernaut that would imminently tear the "ship of state" asunder if nothing was done.
  • Swift would be allied with the madman in his endeavor.
  • The modernist narrator would be diverting Hobbes' analogue, at odds with his philosophical paradigm.
  • The extent of the complex allegory would only be simplistic mockery of modernist vanity.

And how, then, can you have misread my words so profoundly? Of course Swift thought the terror over Hobbes was overblown. Of course his Hack makes an attempt, like every other hack author on politics of 1696, to "answer" Hobbes, and, of course, he fails in the attempt. One reason he fails is that he is mad, and another reason is that he's incapable of making any defense or attack that succeeds, because he has the failures of overly literal and overly figurative readings of everything. The allegory is not particularly complex, and it mocks both the conservative churchmen (where the analogy of the brothers had been used already) who, Filmer-like, dote on power and the modernist anti-Hobbesians who doted on power in the name of opposing Hobbesian power, and the modernist Hobbesians. This is, in fact, what I said: Swift's spokesman ends up supporting Hobbes as much as he dashes at him, because he is an incompetent spokesman. Jonathan Swift the man was unambiguously against Hobbes's celebration of the monarchical power even as he was pessimistically aware that it might all come down to power. His satiric technique was never to speak explicitly for his own views, nor to present much of an alternative to folly, but only to force readers into rejecting the text and the voice of the authority. This is what I have said, and it is what most critics past the 19th century have said. Geogre 10:08, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

I see now that all of these "misunderstandings" have been the result of you obfuscating to cover your own ass. The version I edited did not say that "Swift's spokesman ends up supporting Hobbes as much as he dashes at him", it said "Swift may be as much supporting as dashing at Hobbes", which is absurd, for, as you say, he is "mock[ing] the modernist Hobbesians".

[edit] British/American

Oh, come on, folks! Let's not do this. Let's especially not do it half-way. I just reverted someone putting the period outside the closing quotation marks. I didn't do this as part of some Americo-centrism, but because the whole article is written with American punctuation and orthographic conventions. There is no inherent virtue in one vs. the other, no "it was written in England so," none of that. American punctuation habit calls for periods and commas inside closing quotation marks, colons and semicolons outside. This is a relic of the days of movable type, when, according to Algeo & Pyles, the comma was a half sized type and could shift when a tray was flipped, so a quotation mark (full sized) restrained it. (Notice old books in England as well, where a quotation mark is put after a couple of spacers at the end of a poetic line of quotations?) At any rate, what we can't do is have part of the article British convention and part American. That just makes a mess. Geogre 15:48, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article doesn't discuss use of bodily functions

This work is also well know for its use of bodily functions, but there is no discussion about it on the article. I found these quotes googling:

  • The Tale sits in this accommodating atmosphere as an almost cheerful satire, with a burlesque view of 'Jack' Calvin as he tears the New Testament coat into ribbons, and perverts his 'Father's' will. The scatological twinkle in Swift's eye is clearly present as Jack's ludicrous adherence to the very text of the New Testament is taken to its extreme when, unable to find the 'authentic phrase' for directions to the toilet he fouls himself, and then in equally strict, but with even dafter logic, he refuses to clean himself up, because he 'met with a passage near the bottom' – what carefully chosen words! – 'which seemed to forbid it'.[1]
  • "At length we agreed upon this expedient; that when a customer comes for one of these, and desires in confidence to know the author, he will tell him very privately, as a friend, naming whichever of the wits shall happen to be that week in the vogue; and if Durfey's last play should be in course, I had as lieve he may be the person as Congreve. This I mention, because I am wonderfully well acquainted with the present relish of courteous readers; and have often observed, with singular pleasure, that a fly, driven from a honey-pot, will immediately, with very good appetite alight and finish his meal on an excrement. "
  • (Real, Herman J. and Heinz J. Vienken. "Psychoanalytic Criticism and Swift: the History of a Failure." Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr 1 (1986) :127-141.) The authors question the validity of the evidence used by psychoanalytical criticism to condemn Swift as having an obsession with ‘filth’, ‘anality’, and ‘sado-cannibalistic fantasies’. [2]
  • A shocked D. H. Lawrence regarded Swift’s scatological poetry as indisputable evidence that its author was mad. [3]
  • Others: [4] [5] [6] [7]
Swift's poetry that shocked Lawrence was probably The Lady's Dressing Room, but that's a curiosity quote, and it's not about the Tale. Generally, your quotes show that the work was known for being scatological, which is mentioned, but the particular alledged "bodily function" is actually scattered throughout the work. Note that Herman Real was talking about how psychoanalytical criticism has made much of it, but that's because it's psychoanalytical criticism. For nearly two decades, everything anyone wrote about Swift was about purported potty training, sexual dysfunction, etc. This article does not follow that, preferring instead a less interpretive discussion. There is possibly as much scatology in Gulliver's Travels, so, unless we're going to try to mention scatology in all of Swift's works, I didn't think it was such a big deal in this one. The nihilism of the Tale should be more shocking to contemporary readers than that Jack's followers shit themselves. Geogre 12:53, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
My point is that I think Herman Real is right: there isn't so much filth and anality in the work as the psycho-crits needed. Further, those articles that he's talking about always seemed to assume that Swift's work was filthy and grubby, but they were short on examples. To what Dr. Real said I would only add that it was a time and a place where the filth was bountiful, particularly bountiful, as anyone going near Fleet Ditch would have been reminded. I'm not sure it takes a fascination with poop to show awareness of a city channelling rivers of it down to the Thames. (Oh, and there are plenty of other authors with as much poo in their works who aren't treated the same way, but that's a different argument.) Geogre 12:57, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Almost by the way, thank you for the contribution. Not all that many people come to this dusty corner of the Wikipedia, and a goodly number of professors have ceased teaching the work (so it's not like Oroonoko, which people read without any background). I'm just extremely skeptical about the psycho-crit approach to Swift. Its results are utterly consistent and rather boring. Further, they're licensed on an awful premise: that a clinical practice (psychoanalysis) can be applied to things that are neither persons nor living. As Richard Ellmann said, in Golden Codgers, there is no doubt many of our greatest authors could benefit from a little posthumous psychoanalysis, but I doubt we'll cure any of them. Geogre 15:16, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
I totally agree with you on psychoanalysis. I'm searching material about the use of the "body" by swift and others (aristophanes, plauto, rabelais and sterne), and I just hoped to find some academic analysis in this featured article. Thank you for your clarifications.--BMF81 18:31, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
If you're looking for the people who did the analysis, I suppose Richard Quintana, Frederick Bogel (early), and, most of all, Irvin Ehrenpreis. I'm sure you can tell that Ehrenpreis is a bit of a boogey man in this article, as there are some polite backhands aimed at his "persona" theory, but I wouldn't knock his critical insights or scholarship in general. In the 1960's - 1980's, it was just de rigeur to write about Swift and the body (and Swift and the female body). I don't think the New Historicists ever had that much to say about Swift...at least not the last time I saw, as they were busy at the time seeking out underclass authors. Swift's Skull might be one to look at, although it's pretty sane. The new body theory folks might have gotten to Swift by now. I honestly don't know, but I hope, if they have, that they realize that it is always a ghostly body, the body of the parodic victim, and not a sincere body that's at play in Swift's works. Geogre 19:40, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The standing of the book

I liked the statement from Bloom, but I felt that having him as the only critical voice mentioned by name, and in the lead, is probably not most appropriate. Instead, having a "literary significance" section or something like that would allow us to have various voices, from Johnson (the only work of genius by Swift) to Bloom (probably better from The Canon). There aren't very many figures of stature these days who offer up overviews of all literary history (and Bloom was ridiculed for doing it), but we can certainly get the 19th c. horror at it and the 20th c. rediscovery of its mastery. Geogre 11:15, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] One person's querulousness

The tone of parts of this article (e.g. "Just as now a silly person may spend a small amount of money and publish silly opinions, so it was then. Just as now we are confronted with a staggering array of conspiracy theories, "secret" histories, signs of the apocalypse, "secrets" of politicians, "revelations" of prophets, alarms about household products, hoaxes, and outright fraud, so it was then.") seems un-encyclopedic. In addition, there are no inline citations at all. I feel that the article may no longer be FA-standard. Leon 00:58, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

That's nice. There are no footnotes, and there never will be any. Footnotes are not "citations," and citations are not "inline citations." The article has references, and if you would care to dispute any of the facts, I will be eager to engage that. However, in three years there have been no questions of any of the facts presented in the article. That's a pretty long time to be the #1 Google search for a major work of literature and not have spurious facts questioned. In fact, it's pretty well proof that the article was well researched and presented. If you dislike the tone, then that's all fine. "Encyclopedic" does not mean "forbidding analogy," and I sought and seek to explain the work to an educated reader who is unfamiliar with the work. Again, if you believe that the facts are "likely to be disputed," then, by all means, we'll need to get some citations. If not, your opinion is your opinion, and you are welcome to it, but it does not amount to a valid assessment of whether the article is FA or not.
I should also point out that, "I don't think so" is not the same thing as "I move to FAR." If you are planning that misery, you should say so clearly, and we can find people knowledgeable about the state of Swift scholarship, the work, the period, and the presentation of material on the Tale in print encyclopedias to assess this article and rely much less on whether you think the article is like the others or not. It isn't like the others. It's coherent. Geogre 01:40, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
I made the last part of my comment rashly, I'm not planning any such thing as going to FAR. I also apologize for the comment about references. However I would like to suggest that the tone of the example statement I gave is inappropriate in tone. "Silly people" publishing "silly opinions" - it sounds a lot like early Brittanica articles in which each article had a distinct author and therefore unique authorial voice (I'm thinking of an alternative like, "it was easy for amateur authors to publish their thoughts", without removing the analogy). Although a relative novice here, my impression was that Wikipedia was supposed to err on the side of verifiability in its content, even at the expense of personality. That concern may be ill-founded, but weighing in the length of time the article has been featured does not undermine the honesty of my suggestion.
It was both confrontational and contemptuous to indict me of querulousness by changing something I had written (the subject of my suggestion); you are also "one person", and your possessiveness about this article and admin status does not excuse you of rudeness. Leon 13:57, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
For my part, I apologize for being rude. It's just that there are missionaries out and about who believe that their greatest duty at Wikipedia is to achieve uniformity. When anyone approaches with friendliness and a desire to work with it him/herself, I'm altogether willing. I had trouble with the lines in question, when I wrote them. What I had wanted was to make the fundamental observation that barriers to publication emerged later in the 18th c. There are hosts of works on the emergence of the publisher that note this. In 1695-1705, at least, retailers were publishers, and retailers would accept a 'book' that had been printed by private hands more readily than one they needed to pay for. With such low bars to "publication," anything and everything was set out in the shops. This chaos is necessary for understanding Swift's satirical world. Access to information was exploding, but there was no filter, no assurance, no (to use the Wiki mantra) "reliability." Consequently, all of the enumerated items did exist on the shelves without any necessary ranking or hierarchy of good and bad. Now, I may be the first to publicly, or on the web, draw the analogy between those times and our own, but it was a passing analogy designed solely to give contemporary readers a way of understanding the fluidity (and the reasons for the fluidity). It's a point that I have made elsewhere, but I'm really not going to cite (for obvious reasons, I hope). The difficulty was in the "silly," which I agree is a weak term. I suppose "vain" would get nearer to "vanity press"/vanity associations, but some of the stuff being published (then and now) was utterly silly. If you want to see some of the stuff in an easy-to-find source, check out either Pat Rogers's Grub-Street or even Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (the sect. on the Bubble is fun reading). There were every sort of scheme, every sort of conspiracy, etc., and what is vital for the Tale is that good and bad couldn't be determined except by virtue of a strong mind, high skepticism, and education. Swift's single (in my opinion) impersonation is of a man who goes into the bookshop, reads, and believes everything. He is, consequently, mad.
I will respond more later, but I thought it important to apologize for biting. I've merely been long weary of those who "improve" by complaint, and there is a large, large group of them. They are the annihilation of content. Geogre 14:59, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Returned project template

Novels template returned as it comes under the general description of fictional narrative prose, albeit a 'loose' writing style in comparison to a formal "Novel". :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 09:20, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] OK rationale for {{cn}} tag..

  • you can't simply revert a {{cn}} tag... Ling.Nut (talk) 13:59, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
  • OK — Rationale for {{cn}}: Credit where credit is due. Not citing analytical conclusions is expressly disallowed by WP:OR, and is a form of academic dishonesty. Also known as Wikipedia is Unable to Reason. Scholars deserve credit for their work; they should be cited when we present their ideas. This is true regardless of whether the ideas are controversial or the scholars themselves are inherently notable. One insidious manifestation of a lack of giving credit where it is due occurs when articles form conclusions or offer analyses (e.g., "it seems reasonable to propose..."). Wikipedia has no analytical insights. It is unable to form conclusions. The fact that such analyses are offered in "Wikipedia's voice" (i.e., not cited to their originators) is a sin of omission. It deprives scholars of the credit for this analysis, making the text look and smell disturbingly like original research. Regardless of whether the conclusions offered actually are WP:OR, this kind of "synthesis" affords Wikipedia the role of making judgments and forming reasoned conclusions. That role is not one permitted to Wikipedia; it is expressly disallowed by WP:OR. In the interest of academic integrity, all such analyses should be credited to the scholars who proposed them. Ling.Nut (talk) 14:09, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
  • First, yes, you can. You can revert any edit that is non-contributory. There is no greater right to the person putting the tag than the person removing it. Any placement of any edit without discussion on the talk page is entirely the whim of the editor and therefore carries no force of anything except that whim, that individual's judgment (or lack of it).
  • Now to your rationale: OR is original research. Not putting a citation is not original research. In fact, this is entirely within academic consensus, as, quite frankly, I know. You may not know this, and that's to your shame. Additionally, you are wrong again about "analysis." First, analysis is constantly reported. Second, analysis follows from facts presented, and Wikipedia is not a news aggregator or a clipping service. Our articles should be articles, not plagiarism, not pastiche, not -bot constructed clips. The article establishes, with plenty of references, the facts and then reports academic consensus.
  • Citation is necessary when a fact is or is likely to be disputed. I invite you, by all means, to find an academic source that disputes the role of the narrative voice in A Tale of a Tub. Since I have read most of what is available in English scholarship on the subject, I will be astonished and pleased to find someone so dim witted as to argue that the narrative voice of the Tale is not representative of the "new man," the "cit," and the "projector." Even those who have maintained a disunity of the narrative voice have agreed with the nature of the satire.
  • "Disputed" means disputed by a source, not by someone cruising by looking for footnotes.
  • Furthermore, this article has been one of the most used sources for a long time, and yet, amazingly, with all the scholars who want to decry Wikipedia, I don't see a lot of disputation on this talk page. Isn't that odd? I don't see the sorts of complaints that you will see at, for example, Aphra Behn, which was footnoted junk. Since "citation needed" is supposed to be citation needed (not "possible"), I await the demonstration of the need in the form of disputes from academic sources. I will even offer you a lead, though, on your search: Irvin Ehrenpreis. See what he says, and see what his students have said, and see how "disputed" this might be, how much "original research" it is. There is a massive difference between original research and common knowledge, you know. Geogre (talk) 14:34, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
    • What you haven't noticed is the fact that I put only one tag on this article, not many. There was a reason — because I didn't think it needed many. I am not acting here as a cite-zealot. There are alternate formats for presenting the same info. Crediting scholars within the text [in this case, "A consensus among scholars, as noted by xx..."] is a stylistic alternative to inline cites. It is one which this article employs repeatedly. I didn't put {{cn}} tags in cases where the text provides credit... I am not saying the statement I tagged needs an inline cite per se; I am saying that idea needs to be credited to someone other than Wikipedia. As for why that is needed, my comments above were clear. Wikipedia is unable to draw conclusions. Regardless of whether or not your conclusion is common knowledge among literature professors, it is still a conclusion. If that conclusion represents the consensus among relevant scholars, then a notable scholar needs to be referenced (in some manner!) as a representative of that scholarly consensus. Ling.Nut (talk) 14:55, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Fine. It can also be found in Donald Greene, in Quintana, in virtually everyone. Herman Real does a lot with it, and most of the work along these lines now is found in German. Until 1970, it was everyone. After 1985, it was everyone again. Geogre (talk) 11:55, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry for the tone, but this really is one of those things that's everywhere. I just picked the books that are nearest to hand (literally). However, when people want more of these things, which I regard as quite useless (really, because I think that they harm reliability by shunting the confirmation down to tiny type at the bottom of a page and thereby making their checking less likely rather than more), it's a pickle, because the Tale gets less discussion these days (last two decades) and less germane discussion than it used to. The heyday for writing on the Tale was 60's - 80's. Now, with every article being about post-colonial this and that, every article being constructions of the body, or constructions of space (yes), the sorts of discussion the Tale receives are all "use Swift to talk about something else." Even McKeon is actually using Swift to talk about productive capacities and the crisis of Weberian theory. It's good, but it's still "use the book to talk about something else," so Wikipedia's articles that present scholarly consensus from the last age that discussed the works themselves is fantastically useful for novice readers. When I wrote this, I intentionally steered clear of contemporary discussion, because contemporary discussion is going to be nothing but confusing for an encyclopedia reader. Geogre (talk) 12:42, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FAR notice

A Tale of a Tub has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Cirt (talk) 14:18, 14 January 2008 (UTC).

[edit] Small prose note

Some, such as the discussion of ears or of wisdom being like a nut, a cream sherry, a cackling hen, etc., are outlandish and require a militantly aware and thoughtful reader. - I think that it is best not to use "etc." in an article primarily addressing readers largely ignorant of the text - they cannot fill in the "etc." What do we think about replacing the "etc." with another example or just deleting it? Awadewit | talk 00:06, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps, then: (found in "A Digression in the Modern Kind") [I have to check to see if that's where it is; I'll look around lunchtime; it may be from the prolegomena] and the heavily embedded metaphors found in the narrator's attempts at "dark" reading throughout the digressions, require...." I mean, if the problem FAR people are having is that they don't believe me, then it's easy to make the article much, much longer by being extremely specific and giving lots and lots and lots of examples.
Just to be clear - I was writing here of my own accord. I was specifically trying to separate this from FAR by posting it on the talk page. I believe you! I just think that we shouldn't leave readers guessing. Giving them information they might have to look up or click on is different - that is helping them learn. Awadewit | talk 15:47, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
When I wrote this article, there was a "limit" on pages, and any page beyond 32kb was considered "too long." This article got objections on that grounds, and no one thought readers would possibly stick with it to the end. I thought, as you can imagine, that I was being criminally brief. I don't mean to be cranky or grumpy, but I agree with your note, generally, except that I worry that, if we take one step on the "people who have never opened the book" road when we're talking about specifics, we'll have to go into vast amounts of addition or notes to self-evident and common stuff. Geogre (talk) 13:05, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I can't imagine writing under that limitation, frankly, and you have done a stunning job with it. Perhaps you should consider expanding now that the limit is lifted? As we both know, there is so much that could be said about this very important, but difficult to explain, text. By the way, I'm enjoying getting back into Swift. I read him for my exams, of course, but I've been focusing on the last half of the century for my dissertation. I took the time to reread Tale and a few other Swift works in the last week. What a pleasure. Awadewit | talk 15:47, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
The series of "wisdom is a" metaphors is in Section I. At Wikisource, they have the audacity to label things as "advert," but they do have the text, so searches are easy. (It's a hen that will leave you with nothing but the cackle!) Utgard Loki (talk) 16:04, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
And while I'm at it, I pity, gravely, anyone who reads this book in txt form. It has to be in a nice, old, Clarendon or Caslon font, with generous point size, chain marks at the bottom of the gatherings, and good, solid paper. There are so many textual games in the book that it's unthinkable to read it at Wikisource, unless proceeding directly to a word processor that will prettify it. Utgard Loki (talk) 16:53, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Query

Do you think it is worth adding that Swift was commenting on Erasmus and Rabelais in A Tale of a Tub? These are major literary figures and might be known to readers of the article. I often think it is nice to create these connections whenever possible. Awadewit | talk 20:37, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Probably so. I don't know exactly what to say about "commenting," though, because that begs us to characterize the commentary. One source, by the way, although it was obvious at the time, is Sterne's letters about Tristram Shandy, where he says that it was important for him to stay away from being too close to Swift, just as it was for Swift to not be too close to Rabelais. As for Erasmus, I would imagine that we can state unequivocally (as "common knowledge" (in virtually every discussion of the Tale and therefore without need for a note)) that Praise of Folly was Swift's immediate model for prose parody and the pose of the "Hack" in such parts as the praise of externals. Geogre (talk) 13:26, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Further reading

Are these books from the "Selected bibliography" in The Character of Swift's Satire worth listing in a "Further reading" section?

  • John Clark's Form and Frenzy in Swift's "Tale of a Tub"
  • Phillip Harth's Swift and Anglican Rationalism
  • Ronald Paulson's Theme and Structure in Swift's "Tale of a Tub"
  • Frederik Smith's Language and Reality in Swift's "A Tale of a Tub"
  • Miriam Starkman's Swift's Satire on Learning in "A Tale of a Tub"

Thanks! Awadewit | talk 23:14, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Paulson, yes. Harth is an overview. Smith.... Starkman is essential reading. I'd add Howard Weinbrot, Richard Quintana, and a whole bunch of articles. Paulson can be overblown, and what he was saying wasn't really new, but it's an important (over)statement. Harth contextualizes, and it's a good context for a new reader, but it looks really incomplete to me now. Smith's book is not really one that I endorse. Other people's mileage will vary, but I thought it was misguided. A fully rhetorical approach to the Tale is endlessly rewarding, but without the psychological overtones and the metaphysics. I think there is a Beaumont Fletcher monograph that put the work in the framework of Classical rhetoric that was nice, but I think it's now too ancient and out of print to be found. Starkman is one of the many to point out what Weinbrot and others had already said: there are two errors of understanding satirized in the Tale, two ways of being unlearned, and the Tale sets out the satire that takes center stage in Bk III of GT. Geogre (talk) 13:24, 19 April 2008 (UTC)