Give an account of Jonathan Swift's citique of the'moderns' especially Essay

Give an account of Jonathan Swift's citique of the'moderns' especially as it is expressed in his'Tale of a Tub' (Sect.IX) and 'Gulliver's Travels (Bks III & IV) - Essay Example His satire has intensity and virulence which upset not only his intended targets but till today haunts critics who have at times simply ascribed it to Swift’s predisposition to misanthropy and depression. Though recent critical knowledge has moved away from this view, the perception of Swift as a misanthrope persists. Perhaps the vehemence of Swift’s satire can be attributed in part to the peculiar need felt by eighteenth century thinkers of the immense importance of their times. There is no other way to explain the huge output of satire in the eighteenth century. Daniel Defoe, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, John Dryden, Alexander Pope were some other eighteenth century writers who utilized satire in the various genres of literature. Certainly none troubled the eighteenth century conscience more than Swift himself who uses savage polemic to subdue what was anathema to him. It would be wise to take a look at eighteenth century English history to discover where Swift stood and the causes which drew his ire. The late seventeenth century had seen the vigorous emergence in print of ideas which, to put it simply, sought to foreground humanity without any reference to divinity or society. Foremost and most influential was John Locke who in his essay titled, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) attributed the formation of human knowledge to the influence of external stimuli and experience. He rejected the notion that humans were born with certain innate ideas such as those concerning God, time, substance etc. He famously compared the human mind at birth to a white sheet of paper, a tabula rasa, which depended on experience and sense memory to form knowledge. Science emerged as an exciting new discipline that increasingly became a specialisation, cut off from society. Isaac Newton had published his Principia in 1687. The eighteenth century is therefore also termed as â€Å"The Age of Reason† and the â€Å"Age of Enlightenment†. However this