Slavery and Augustan Literature: Swift, Pope and Gay

by Richardson; J

• ISBN13: 9780415312868
• ISBN10: 0415312868
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-12-09
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Slavery and Augustan Literatureinvestigates slavery in the work of Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and John Gay. These three writers were connected with a Tory ministry, which attempted to increase substantially the English share of the international slave trade. They all wrote in support of the treaty that was meant to effect that increase. The book begins with contemporary ideas about slavery, with the Tory ministry years and with texts written during those years. These texts tend to obscure the importance of the slave trade to Tory planning. In its second half, the book analyses the attitudes towards slavery in Pope's Horatian poems,An Essay on Man,Polly,A Modest ProposalandGulliver's Travels. John Richardson shows how, despite differences, Swift, Pope and Gay adopt a mixed position of admiration for freedom alongside implicit support for slavery.

Author Biography

John Richardson teaches literature at the National University of Singapore.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
References and short titles	xi
Introduction	1	(12)
The English and slavery	13	(26)
How much people knew	13	(9)
What scope there was to condemn	22	(7)
Attitudes	29	(10)
The Scriblerus Club	39	(24)
Peace preliminaries and Swift (1710--11)	39	(8)
The Treaty of Utrecht and Pope (January 1712--Spring 1713)	47	(10)
Peace and Scriblerus (Summer 1713--14)	57	(6)
Writing the peace	63	(26)
The geography of the peace	63	(6)
Swift's Tory pamphleteering	69	(7)
Poetry of war and peace	76	(7)
Windsor-Forest	83	(6)
Pope	89	(20)
Pope and Cato	89	(10)
Pope and slavery	99	(10)
Gay	109	(12)
Gay, opposition, slavery	109	(4)
The Captives and Polly	113	(8)
Swift	121	(26)
Irish pamphlets	121	(8)
A Modest Proposal	129	(7)
Gulliver's Travels	136	(11)
Conclusion	147	(6)
Notes	153	(20)
Bibliography	173	(10)
Index	183