Chapter 15 - Style and Language

Summary

Since the eighteenth century, Swift’s prose has been admired for its simplicity and clarity. This chapter pays attention to how the ‘purity’ of Swift’s prose style interconnects with the coarseness and grotesquery of his writing. Swift, this chapter argues, was part of a reaction that emerged in the late seventeenth century against the Elizabethan writers and their ornate metaphysical style. The level of details that he imported into his prose fictions opened up new visual possibilities, both for narrative and for disgust. His microscopic eye collides with his scatological vision.