Dean Swift: The Satirist and his
Faith
A Symposium on Jonathan Swift and
Christianity
Conducted at The Deanery of St.
Patrick's, Upper Kevin Street, Dublin
8, on 19 October 2002,
with Dr Robert Mahony in the Chair.
Programme:
Anne Barbeau Gardiner (City University of New York)
'Swift and the Idea of the Primitive Church'
Prof. Gardiner, whose works on John Dyden include Ancient Faith and Modern
Freedom (1998), is a leading authority on the religious struggles of the age
as context for later 17th-century literature in English.
Michael DePorte (University
of New Hampshire)
'Public Certainties, Private Doubt: Swift in and out
of the Pulpit'
Prof. DePorte has been a prominent commentator on Swift since his Nightmares
and Hobbyhorses: Swift, Sterne and Augustan Ideas of Madness appeared in
1974.
Ruth A. Herman (University
of Hertfordshire)
'The Dean and the Dissenters'
Dr. Herman is a student of Swift's relationships with contemporary
professionals: writers, politician and, clergy. Her book on Swift's friend
Delarivier Manley, a leading woman writer of the early eighteenth century,
will soon be published by the University
of Delaware Press in the USA.
W. J. McCormack (Goldsmiths' College, University of London)
'Swift and "The Day of Judgment" '
Prof. McCormack's command of Ireland's literary history ranges inclusively
from the seventeenth century to the present; he is the author of over a dozen
books in this field, editor of as many more, and founder of the Jonathan
Swift Summer School at Celbridge.
Brean S.Hammond (Professor of English Studies, University
of Nottingham)
Dean Swift: The Satirist and his Faith - a Concluding
Overview
Readers fresh to Guliver's Travels might imagine, on the basis of some of
its episodes, that Swift was an apostle of religious toleration. This paper
argues that all such episodes have, however, a sinister, darker side, much
more consonant with Swift's non-fictional writings, in a range of which it is
shown that Swift scarcely treated Dissenters, in particular, as Christians at
all. What was the nature of his own fundamental commitment to Christianity?
What relationship subtends between Swift's opinions on the politics of church
and state, and his views on faith itself? This paper concludes by commenting
on the difficulty for twenty-first century readers of Swift in approaching
'an undeniably great writer who stands in opposition to tenets of Christian
faith, or to political inferences from them, that underlie democratic
freedoms now held to be inalienable'.
The discussion, introduced as above, continued with participation by
audience.
A reception followed, sponsored by Irish Academic Press to mark the
publication of Jonathan Swift and the Church
of Ireland,
1710-1724 by Christopher J. Fauske
Discourse during Evensong, Sunday October 20:
Dr Robert Mahony (Catholic University of America)
Swift and Sin
Prof. Mahony is author of Jonathan Swift: The Irish Identity (1995)
and founder of the Center for Irish Studies at CUA.
***
Dr Robert Mahony has undertaken to make available e-mail addresses of
authors to bona-fide scholarly enquirers, who should e-mail him at Mahony@cua.edu.
We are adding links to other Swift sites, on
a reciprocal basis, as we identify them.
For additional background relating to St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin,
see the cathedral website.
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(c) Copyright on the electronic versions of papers as
published in these Proceedings is with Dr Bob Mahony and Dr Sean Moore 2002;
copyright on contents of papers remains with the authors, and possibly with
their publishers if published eleswhere.
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