The Words upon the Window-Pane (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)

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Jonathan Swift, the eighteenth century satirist and poet, here a spirit called up in a séance. The ghost of Swift resembles the man at a more or less recognizable point in his life, during old age but before his descent into madness. In his two dialogues with the spirit forms of the women whom he loved, the satirist’s wry cynicism has turned to bitterness and paranoia. In countering Vanessa’s passionate offer of marriage, he describes his own “disease of the blood” and the more general malaise of a debased humanity. Swift is caught at that point in...

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