If poets use language as musicians use musical instruments, Swift’s works would be a soundtrack of unpleasant, dissonant noises. Jonathon Swift, the premier satirist in English literature, does not poeticize the human experience with romance and beauty. He litters his poems, Description of a City Shower and The Lady’s Dressing Room, with filthy imagery and grotesque satire. The unconventionality of Swift’s poetry may be explained using his Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift. He begins this poem on the consideration of his own death with fellow author Rochefoucauld’s maxim, “In the misfortune of our best friends we always find something that does not displease us.” This morally skewed line inspired some of the late poet’s work, especially in
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Literally, it is describing a rainfall. Oppositely and figuratively, a rain shower should cleanse the city of its impurities, but this is not the case in Swift’s poem. Instead, the ending of the downpour brings with it the ending of friendship, of economic opportunity for the shopkeepers, and of the supposed physical cleansing of the city. Swift’s irony declares that the shower did exactly what was not expected of it; London is dirtier than before. The quean’s hair flings dirty sweat and dust , just as the rain sprinkles grime onto the city streets. His scatological language appears in his description of the post-shower streets. “Sweeping from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts and blood, drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud, dead cats, and turnip tops, come tumbling down the flood” create a rotten olfactory and visual imagery for the reader. By his simple publishing of the poem, one can conclude that he enjoyed the fact that readers would experience the nausea that accompanies the “swelling kennels…[with] filth of all hues and odors.”
Swift’s fear of competition can be found in his Verses on the Death. In City Shower, the temporary utopia amongst the Londoners is void of the usual political competition between them. Unbearable to him, he must end it. He states “when you sink, I seem the higher.” By penning a scene that is more chaotic after the peace illustrates Swift’s joy in misery. Just when the Londoners thought their city …show more content…
He must not compete with femininity and, therefore, finds pleasure in it. In the former, he writes that he grieves for Strephon’s discoveries who, as a result, is “blind to all the charms of womankind.” Swift is pleased by Strephon’s new visibility, which is illustrated by the narrator’s asking, “Why Strephon will you tell the rest?” He is simultaneously begging Strephon to tell more while knowing that more uncovered horrors will upset himself, Strephon, and the readers. Women go through hours of treacherous preparation, specifically five in the case of this poem, in order to attract affectionate attention from males. The detective of femininity upsets his stomach at the sight and smell of Celia’s dressing room, and Swift does not spare the reader the same nausea. Despite that discomfort, the reader can see another character take pride in both his own and in another’s misery. Strephon strangely enjoys the feminine misery of beauty, as he continues to explore even after finding appalling artifacts. He relishes in this uncovering of uncleanliness, as on line 87 of The Lady’s Dressing Room, Swift writes that “[Strephon] still was comforted to find” the revulsions of Celia’s
Literally, it is describing a rainfall. Oppositely and figuratively, a rain shower should cleanse the city of its impurities, but this is not the case in Swift’s poem. Instead, the ending of the downpour brings with it the ending of friendship, of economic opportunity for the shopkeepers, and of the supposed physical cleansing of the city. Swift’s irony declares that the shower did exactly what was not expected of it; London is dirtier than before. The quean’s hair flings dirty sweat and dust , just as the rain sprinkles grime onto the city streets. His scatological language appears in his description of the post-shower streets. “Sweeping from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts and blood, drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud, dead cats, and turnip tops, come tumbling down the flood” create a rotten olfactory and visual imagery for the reader. By his simple publishing of the poem, one can conclude that he enjoyed the fact that readers would experience the nausea that accompanies the “swelling kennels…[with] filth of all hues and odors.”
Swift’s fear of competition can be found in his Verses on the Death. In City Shower, the temporary utopia amongst the Londoners is void of the usual political competition between them. Unbearable to him, he must end it. He states “when you sink, I seem the higher.” By penning a scene that is more chaotic after the peace illustrates Swift’s joy in misery. Just when the Londoners thought their city …show more content…
He must not compete with femininity and, therefore, finds pleasure in it. In the former, he writes that he grieves for Strephon’s discoveries who, as a result, is “blind to all the charms of womankind.” Swift is pleased by Strephon’s new visibility, which is illustrated by the narrator’s asking, “Why Strephon will you tell the rest?” He is simultaneously begging Strephon to tell more while knowing that more uncovered horrors will upset himself, Strephon, and the readers. Women go through hours of treacherous preparation, specifically five in the case of this poem, in order to attract affectionate attention from males. The detective of femininity upsets his stomach at the sight and smell of Celia’s dressing room, and Swift does not spare the reader the same nausea. Despite that discomfort, the reader can see another character take pride in both his own and in another’s misery. Strephon strangely enjoys the feminine misery of beauty, as he continues to explore even after finding appalling artifacts. He relishes in this uncovering of uncleanliness, as on line 87 of The Lady’s Dressing Room, Swift writes that “[Strephon] still was comforted to find” the revulsions of Celia’s