Content area
Full Text
Robert Hunting. Jonathan Swift. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1989. Pp. 152. $18.95.
This edition, as Mr. Hunting accurately declares in his Preface, is "very substantially revised" from its 1967 original. The changes are for the better. There is more, for example, on The Conduct of the Allies, "The Day of Judgement," "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift," Swift's sermons, and Gulliver's Travels (the impossibly crowded living space in Mildano). Often Mr. Hunting is more incisive, as in his analysis of "A Description of a City Shower" and the digression on madness in section IX of A Tale of a Tub.
In the Preface, Mr. Hunting also notes that his opinions "have changed over the years." Of the Travels's conclusion: in 1967, "I am convinced that Swift would, in the main, have endorsed Gulliver's terrible indictment"; in 1989, "I am convinced that Swift would not...