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Jonathan Swift's Last Joke
- thisisauserid 5mo agoSwift wrote his famous epitaph to eternally mock his bitter rival. Thanks, Gemini.
- nealabq 5mo agoI find myself wondering if this essay is meant as a gentle satire. Bemused not savage, not Swiftian. I am reminded of Lord Peter Wimsey.
- smitty1e 5mo ago> Ozymandian pathos ...for the win.
- nealabq 5mo agoWere this fiction, I would expect a denouement where images of the two memorial stones, black and white, when placed side by side (as Swift intended), reveal a subtle joke.
- velcrovan 5mo agoI may be dense but I’ve reread the article several times trying to understand exactly how this jab was supposed to work against its target. Was it the mere physical juxtaposition and contrast of tone and appearance? I feel like some clever wordplay must have been involved (such as the lines of Swift’s epitaph running into Marsh’s and changing their meaning) … otherwise it doesn’t seem terribly clever? But Swift was terribly clever in general, so I must be missing something.
- thisisauserid 5mo agoSwift intentionally placed his stark and brief epitaph directly beside the gaudy and verbose monument of Marsh. This physical and rhetorical contrast eternally exposed the pompous vanity of his rival.
- velcrovan 5mo agoEternally until they moved one of them
- russellbeattie 5mo agoAgreed - I was waiting for a more insightful explanation. I'm not a scholar, but I associate Swift with hyperbole and this seems way too subtle, if not bland. Given how exact Swift was in terms of where and how the epitaph was placed, there definitely seems to be some meaning there that's been lost. There's got to be more to it.