Satire was core to the work of Thomas Hobbes although his critics also used it as a weapon to ridicule him. Condren uses Hobbes as an example to demonstrate that an examination of the persona is needed to advance our understanding of a writer's philosophy.

Parody was a crucial technique for the satirists and novelists associated with the Scriblerus Club. The great eighteenth-century wits (Alexander Pope, John Gay, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne) often explored the limits of the ugly, the droll, the grotesque and the insane by mocking, distorting and deconstructing multiple discourses, genres, modes and methods of representation. This book traces the continuity and difference in parodic textuality from Pope to Sterne. It focuses on polyphony, intertextuality and deconstruction in parodic genres and examines the uses of parody in such texts as «The Beggar’s Opera», «The Dunciad», «Joseph Andrews» and «Tristram Shandy». The book demonstrates how parody helped the modern novel to emerge as a critical and artistically self-conscious form.

This collection of critical thinking situates the satire of Jonathan Swift within both its eighteenth-century contexts and our modern anxieties about personal identity and communication. Augustan satire at its most provocative is not simply concerned with the public matters of politics or religion, but also offers a precise medium in which to express the paradox of ironic detachment amidst deep conviction. The critics chosen for this volume demonstrate the complexity of Swift's work. Its four sections explore matters of authorial identity, the relation between Swift's writing and its historical context, the full range of his comments on gender, and his deployment of metaphor and irony to engage the reader. Swift has often been regarded as a writer who anticipated many twentieth-century cultural preoccupations, and this volume provides an opportunity to test just how modern he actually was. It also provides an answer to those who would wish to simplify his writing as that of Tory and misogynist. The theoretical perspectives of the contributors are lucidly explained and their critical terms located in the wider contexts of contemporary theory in the introduction and headnotes. The volume places Swift historically within the philosophical and religious traditions of eighteenth-century thought.

This essential guide defines literature of the eighteenth century as a literature written and received as public conversation. Moyra Haslett discusses and challenges conventional ways of reading the period, particularly in relation to notions of the public sphere. In her wide-ranging study, Haslett reads key texts - including The Dunciad, Gulliver's Travels and Pamela - in their literary and cultural contexts, and examines such genres as the periodical, the familiar letter, the verse epistle and the novel as textual equivalents of coterie culture.

This collection of essays primarily honours Bernfried Nugel the teacher and scholar, but it also pays homage to Bernfried Nugel the indefatigable worker in the cause of Aldous Huxley studies. It is due to this latter manifestation that many of the contributors to this volume know each other personally, having met at one or more of the international conferences that Professor Nugel organized and either hosted or co-hosted. At Munster, his home university, he has also been instrumental in establishing and heading a center for admirers of Huxley's work, along with a fine library of Huxley materials, including manuscripts and numerous first editions. (Series: "Human Potentialities". Studien zu Aldous Huxley & zeitgenossischer Kultur/Studies in Aldous Huxley & Contemporary Culture - Vol. 7)

Alexander Pope was, at one time, the world's most celebrated poet. His trenchant satirical works - in which the foibles of all the critics, hacks and bad poets of his day are exploded - and his masterful heroi-comic poem The Rape of the Lock continue to inspire generations of writers and readers to this day. Alongside his more prominent poetical production, Pope engaged with some of the sharpest wits of his era - including Jonathan Swift and John Gay, the author of The Beggar's Opera - in writing a number of satirical prose works, of which Scriblerus is perhaps the greatest achievement.As he prepares to become father for the first time, the scholar Cornelius is determined to settle on nothing less than a child of the "e;learned sex"e; - a boy - and give him the most thorough education so that he can become the greatest critic who ever lived. An account of the birth, the infancy, the schooling, the diet-planning, the unconventional love affairs and the attainments of this child prodigy, The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus is surely the funniest imaginary biography ever written.

How do young scholars from the Arab world interact with English literature? Is literature relevant to their life? Can it help shape their reality? Is this affiliation new, or is there a pattern? This book poses some answers to these questions and more; it is ideal for university students and young intellectuals who seek further insight into world literature and literary theory. As this book shows, strong and courageous voices from the past, voices that transcend time and space, like Swift’s, must remain alive in the departments of English and world literature in this wasteland of globalization - a world dominated by cold science, materialism, and conflict. There is need for Swift to haunt us, for his ghost to wake us to the truth. Anarchist, anti-colonialist, nay-sayer, champion of the oppressed and conscious of the plight of women, Swift is the ultimate “therapeutic ironist”; what more can a pen do?