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Chapter 4 - Reason and Unreason

from Part I - Personal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2024

By
Allan Ingram
Edited by
Joseph Hone  and
Pat Rogers
Joseph Hone
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Pat Rogers
Affiliation:
University of South Florida
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Summary

Swift specialised in playing with distinctions between reason and unreason. This chapter focuses on two major works, A Tale of a Tub (1704) and Gulliver’s Travels (1726), in which Swift’s blurs the line between reason and unreason: firstly in ‘A Digression concerning the Original, the Use and Improvement of Madness in a Commonwealth’, and secondly in Gulliver’s fourth voyage to the Yahoos. Swift repeatedly engages in a sleight of hand, obliging readers to appreciate the ease with which reason can slip into madness. But in the voyage to the Yahoos, this chapter argues, readers find Gulliver’s self-loathing and misanthropy to be a step too far. Swift’s skill is to make his reader question their own perspectives and their own balance between reason and unreason.

Keywords

Jonathan Swiftreasonunreasonmadness
Type
Chapter
Information
Jonathan Swift in Context , pp. 26 - 32
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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