Jonathan Swift and Popular Culture: Myth, Media, and the Man.(Book Review)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-JUL-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 Modern Humanities Research Association

Jonathan Swift and Popular Culture: Myth, Media, and the Man. By ANN CLINE KELLY. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave. 2002. xi+244 pp. 32.50 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0-312-23959-9.

This highly entertaining and enjoyable book is one that I will be putting on my undergraduatereading list immediately. Apart from what it has to say about Swift, the book is as good an exemplar as one could hope to find of the aesthetics and politics of reception. In the excellent final chapter on Swift as an 'epic hero', that is to say, as Irish patriot who symbolizes all the best qualities of his nation, Kelly writes that post-1949: Swift usually stands for no particular political agenda, but is...

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