PhD ThesisLanguage is not a simple bridge from thought to meaning: it has a constitutive
function of its own, and its effects should be considered along with the ideas it
conveys. The language of Jonathan Swift illustrates this point exactly,
because of its mode of operation. In the Swiffian text language is always at
work; involved in processes of questioning and reshaping its contents, and our
reading of them. Swift's writing enacts, as much as it states, and the reader
must be attentive to this process, if the full impact of the texts is to be
measured. My project in this thesis is to analyse how language operates in the
major works, and the outcome of its activity. In each chapter, I consider how
relevant seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ideas of language impact on, and
are affected by, Swift's language; as well as his amenability to current ideas in
theories of language. First, seventeenth-century attempts to reform and purge
language are measured against Swift's handful of explicit statements on the
subject; and although there are points of convergence, I conclude that it is
more productive to study Swift's less conventional experiments with language
than to assemble a fitful philosophy from a few comments. The remaining
chapters engage in this project. I assess A Tale of a Tub in relation to ideas of
'the book'—an opportunity to consider the complex interactions between
authors, texts, and readers from the vantage point of an ideal of certainty and
totality. The poetry is measured against the Augustan separation of 'sound'
from 'sense', which founders when confronted with Swift's contemplation of
the poetic object through excessive concentration on the body and its products.
And Gulliver 's Travels represents an engagement with issues of fictionality
and context, and how these affect the dispensation of meaning. Throughout
these discussions, my intention is to establish that Swift's writing survives,
and its future is assured, because of its interactive, interrogatory, self reflective
nature