THE WORD AND THE THING IN SWIFT'S PROSE (LINGUISTICS, RHETORIC, IRELAND)
Abstract
In Book III of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels the professors of the Academy of Lagado offer "an Expedient . . . that since Words are only Names for Things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them, such Things as were necessary to express the particular Business they are to discourse on." Throughout the great variety of discourse Swift produced in his active literary and public career, his "particular business" was often an attempt to overcome the problematical nature of the relationship between words and things. His concern manifests itself in three areas: politics, where the unscrupulous manipulate words and things for their own or their party's gain; literature, which he sees as degenerating rapidly into incomprehensibility because of the corruptions wrought by those who use words without clear and consistent referents; and religion, where an unsteady word-thing relationship results in misreading of the Scriptures and the increase of sects, an increase which threatens the Church of England and civil peace. This dissertation focuses on the word-thing relationship as a central subject, theme, and technique of Swift's prose. Linking historical linquistics with traditional eighteenth-century literary study, this work places Swift's views on language in the context of his age and attempts to interpret or reinterpret his prose works in light of this focus. My argument is that Swift's works are more often about language than they are about anything else. Through a variety of overt statements and rhetorical techniques, Swift illustrates the negative consequences of words not properly connected to things, criticizes those who cause this disconnection, and attempts to overcome the problematical nature of the word-thing relationship.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
British and Irish literature
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