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Article: Swift's Politics: A Study in Disaffection.
- Article from:
- Criticism
- Article date:
- January 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Wayne State University Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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by Ian Higgins. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xiii + 232. $54.95.
Emphasizing the extremist and subversive elements in Swift's writings, Higgins makes an interesting and provocative, though less than convincing, case for Swift's having been, if not a Jacobite per se, someone with strong Jacobite sympathies and associations. The book's main strength lies in its skillful marshaling of passages from Swift's texts--both canonical and little-known--that serve to spotlight a powerful strain of disaffection with the status quo and an imaginative engagement with revolutionary alternatives. The emphasis placed on these aspects of Swift's writings ...