In his satire, Jonathan Swift identifies and redresses what twentieth-century critical theorists name the repression of mimesis attendant on the advent of modernity. Focusing on A Tale of a Tub, A Modest Proposal, and Gulliver's Travels, this essay shows how Swift exploits the powers of mimesis in order to effect an antidote to the repression of mimesis those satires expose. Invoking Michael Taussig's analysis of mimesis and alterity, this essay explores how Swift's disenchantment of modernity's fiction of its own a-fictionality affirms the power of representation over human bodies, lives, and histories.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Carolyn A. Day;
(2017)
Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease
(/isis/citation/CBB373720154/)
Book
Shuttleton, David E.;
(2007)
Smallpox and the Literary Imagination 1660--1820
(/isis/citation/CBB000930590/)
Book
Lorenzo Servitje;
(2021)
Medicine Is War: The Martial Metaphor in Victorian Literature and Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB755609187/)
Book
Annika Mann;
(2018)
Reading Contagion: The Hazards of Reading in the Age of Print
(/isis/citation/CBB854945917/)
Book
Marc Priewe;
(2014)
Textualizing Illness: Medicine and Culture in New England, 1620-1730
(/isis/citation/CBB220589373/)
Book
Natalie Roxburgh;
Jennifer S. Henke;
(2020)
Psychopharmacology in British Literature and Culture, 1780–1900
(/isis/citation/CBB400464162/)
Article
Levene, Alysa;
Siena, Kevin;
(2013)
Reporting Dirt and Disease: Child Ill-health in Eighteenth-Century England
(/isis/citation/CBB001320812/)
Article
Farr, Jason S.;
(2014)
Sharp Minds / Twisted Bodies: Intellect, Disability, and Female Education in Frances Burney's Camilla
(/isis/citation/CBB001201897/)
Article
Barnes, Diana;
(2012)
The Public Life of a Woman of Wit and Quality: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Vogue for Smallpox Inoculation
(/isis/citation/CBB001202004/)
Article
Houston, R. A.;
(2014)
A Latent Historiography? The Case of Psychiatry in Britain, 1500--1820
(/isis/citation/CBB001201200/)
Article
Burnard, Trevor;
Follett, Richard;
(2012)
Caribbean Slavery, British Anti-Slavery, and the Cultural Politics of Venereal Disease
(/isis/citation/CBB001212674/)
Article
Biddiss, Michael;
(2014)
Jane Austen (1775--1817) and the Cultural History of Health
(/isis/citation/CBB001421985/)
Article
Noyes, Russell, Jr.;
(2011)
The Transformation of Hypochondriasis in British Medicine, 1680--1830
(/isis/citation/CBB001210675/)
Article
Simon, Linda;
(2014)
Battling the “Invincible Predator”: Alzheimer's Disease as Metaphor
(/isis/citation/CBB001202130/)
Chapter
Lorch, Marjorie Perlman;
(2007)
Explorations of the Brain, Mind and Medicine in the Writings of Jonathan Swift
(/isis/citation/CBB001032166/)
Book
Lane, Joan;
(2001)
A Social History of Medicine: Health, Healing, and Disease in England, 1750-1950
(/isis/citation/CBB000410056/)
Book
Porter, Roy;
(2001)
Bodies Politic: Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900
(/isis/citation/CBB000320356/)
Thesis
Richard Thomas Bellis;
(2019)
Making Anatomical Knowledge About Disease in Late Georgian Britain, from Dissection Table to the Printed Book and Beyond : Matthew Baillie's 'Morbid Anatomy' and Its Accompanying Engravings
(/isis/citation/CBB288181113/)
Article
Newton, Gill;
(2011)
Infant Mortality Variations, Feeding Practices and Social Status in London between 1550 and 1750
(/isis/citation/CBB001210674/)
Chapter
Spates, William;
(2010)
Shakespeare and the Irony of Early Modern Disease Metaphor and Metonymy
(/isis/citation/CBB001253087/)
Be the first to comment!