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The Ungrateful Muse: Jonathan Swift's ‘A Panegyrick on the Dean’ and Other Poems
Author(s) -
Cook Daniel
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/1754-0208.12464
Subject(s) - panegyric , swift , poetry , art , literature , value (mathematics) , politics , relevance (law) , classics , law , political science , computer science , machine learning , programming language
An indiscriminately allusive, aggressively intertextual poem, ‘A Panegyrick on the Dean, in the Person of a Lady in the North’, is both an audacious celebration of Swift's public life in writing and a mock‐panegyric that quietly, condescendingly, queries his own continued relevance as a political commentator during his retreat from Dublin. In foolhardily attempting to prolong his career by indoctrinating his ‘grateful’ young disciple, a confessed hater of books, in building an unseemly outhouse to mark his diminished value in Ireland and in refusing to be bettered by rival satirists, Swift ironically commemorates himself as a mere writer of libels.