Jonathan Swift’s Utopian and Dystopian Worlds

Notes on Jonathan Swift’s utopian and dystopian worlds
Constantin Manea Maria-Camelia Manea University of Piteşti Abstract: The present paper‟s aim is to substantiate the features of novelty that Swift generated in English and
(indirectly) in world literature, with regard to the use of utopian and dystopian elements within the broader scope of satire. Jonathan Swift‟s satirical prose, which was meant to ridicule human vices and flaws, as well as a number of highly topical issues, considered with irony or sarcasm, chose variegated targets – all external objects and facts, not abstract entities , as the satirist must exaggerate and distort reality, and so the satirical literary product can be said to be referential, while allegory supports the complexity of the message. The author‟s analytic, critical tendency does not essentially clash with the order-seeking intellect. He generates “parallel universes”, inhabited by grotesque beings and illogical realities, yet this cannot be done without the characteristic traits of a world delineated with powerful objectivity. Swift‟s “dramatic satire” led to the creation of his anti-utopias / dystopias, which are essentially fruitful, and thus capable of generating an undeniable curative function. Key-words: utopia, dystopia, satire, narrative, irony, allegory

Introduction. The main contention of the present paper does not concern (general) questions of literary history so much as the analytic identification of the modern source of dystopian writing in the world (not only in the English-speaking world). The functional load of Swift‟s satire was not intellectually limited, in the classical manner of older allegorical criticism, but fully provable in the hermeneutic terms of the modern analysis of the literary discourse. The 18th century, an era characterized by both rationalistic and sentimental leanings, was preeminently the century of common-sense, relying on wisdom derived from practical activities. This is the age when

Bibliography: Blamires, Harry, A History of Literary Criticism, Macmillan, London, 1991 Clonţea, Procopie, Bantaş, Andrei, Clonţea, Doina, Annotated English Literature, Eighteenth Century Prose, Ed. Paralela 45, Piteşti, 1996 Daiches, David, A Critical History of English Literature, vol. 1, 2, London, Secker and Warburg, London, 1969 Daiches, David, The Novel and the Modern World, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1960 Day, Martin S., History of English Literature – a college course guide, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1963 Ghent, van, Dorothy, The English Novel – Form and Function, Harper and Row, Publishers, New York, 1961 Guerin, L., Wilfred, et al., A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, Harper and Row, New York, 1966 Leviţchi, Leon, Trifu, Sever, Focşeneanu,Veronica, Istoria literaturii engleze şi americane, All Educational S. A., Bucureşti, 1998 More, Thomas, Utopia, in The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, Volume I, ed. by Frank Kermode and John Hollanders, Oxford University Press, New York, 1973 Muir, Edwin, The Structure of the Novel, Hogarth Press, London, 1967 Munteanu, Romul, Clasicism şi baroc în cultura europeană din sec. al XVII-lea, Editura Univers, Bucureşti, 1983 Olteanu, Tudor, Morfologia romanului european în sec. al XVIII-lea, Editura Univers, Bucureşti, 1974 Rogers, Pat, The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987 Sanders, Andrew, The short Oxford history of English literature, revised edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford Tambling, Jeremy, Open Guides to Literature, Narrative and Ideology, Open University Press, Philadelphia, 1991 The New Pelican Guide to English Literature, edited by Boris Ford, Penguin Books, London, 1991 Volceanov, George, English Literature from Beowulf to Jane Austen, Ed. România de Mâine, Bucureşti, 1998.