Discussing and reflecting on Swift

Everyone should have had a chance to do some leisurely reading in Swift over the holiday, and should have posted whatever you'd like to say about it to the appropriate section of the Reading Swift forum. Right now, it seems to me time to share whatever we've come to in terms of our understanding of him as a writer, and, equally important, what seems to be becoming clearer about the prose and the society of the period. So we'll begin with a round (perhaps organized around who read what) in which you tell the rest of us what you read and what seem to you the most important things you learned -- about Swift, his writing, and the writing of the period -- from your reading. Perhaps most important, you might say what questions were raised for you -- specifics about the text or Swift, but also questions about the background and context of his work.

Between now and Wednesday afternoon, read as many of the postings put up so far this year as you can. If you like, you can reflect on (respond to) any of them, but your main aim is to see what people have to say. You can find the new postings by looking at the date: I'd expected that the most recent ones would come on the top, but they don't. If you have trouble locating the ones posted this year, noticed the "Display replies" pulldown menu at the top of each forum topic; you can choose among "nested form," "threaded form," and flat with newest at the top or oldest at the top. The easy way to find what you want to read (especially if, as is the case in some postings, the text doesn't properly "wrap," so that to read it you have to scroll right for every line), is to set it at "Display replies in threaded form."

You should start with the ones on the same work you read, and then move on to the ones on works you read earlier. Be ready, in class Wednesday, to propose an issue for discussion (possibly about one specific work, but preferably about Swift in general -- his ideas, his prose style, his work.

Select a couple of sentences or short passages from different postings to focus our discussion. Print them out and bring them with you, or be prepared to identify them very quickly (by work, poster, and date and time) so I can put them up on the screen for discussion.