The Poetry of Swift (Masterplots, Definitive Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Jonathan Swift
- First Published: 1713
- Genres: Satire, Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Authors or writers, Literature, Religion, Poetry or poets, England or English people, Catholics or Catholic Church, Ireland or Irish people
Critical Evaluation:
Poetry was never the form in which Jonathan Swift’s talents were exhibited at their greatest, but his incisive satirical wit made his verses a powerful political weapon and a strong defense of common sense and morality. His poetic works, as well as his prose, stand high in the ranks of Augustan writing.
Swift’s first poems were floundering attempts to master the rather formless Pindaric ode popularized by Abraham Cowley, but he soon discovered that the heroic couplet gave him the control and discipline he needed to compress his ideas for the...
[The entire page is 2847 words long]
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