SWIFT, JONATHAN. — Irish writer, born in Dublin on 30 November 1667, died there on 19 October 1745.
Although he had received orders in the Anglican Church, he was nevertheless hostile to all the historical forms of Christianity. In his satirical poem The tale of a tub, Peter (the Catholic Church), Martin (the Protestant), and Jack (the Calvinist) are in fact violently attacked. In The battle of the books he contributed to the famous querelle concerning the supremacy of the ancients or the moderns. But his masterpiece is Gulliver's Travels (1727), a satire that, on account of its universal pessimism regarding the fate of men and its bitter philosophy concerning fundamental human wickedness, might be called Leopardi-like, setting aside the Italian poet’s lyrical gift. But by a quirk of fate and by virtue of the author’s inventive imagination, two of the four books composing it, the Voyage to the land of the dwarfs and the Voyage to the land of the giants, have become classics for children. S. is of interest for the singular acumen of his satire, which makes him the champion of the English Enlightenment, and for the extreme lucidity of his language; but he is repellent for his virulence and ferocity, even though he never exhausts himself in personal polemic. The other aspect of this complex figure is represented by his sentimental correspondence with Esther Johnson, contained in Journal to Stella (1710–13), and by the poem Cadenas and Vanessa (Cadenas stands for Decanus), dedicated to another woman, written in 1713 and published after her death, in 1723. This biographical aspect has aroused great interest among modern scholars of S. The great eighteenth-century critic Samuel Johnson did not conceal his antipathy toward the writer. S. died half-mad in Dublin.