Contemporary British satire and the problem of Jonathan Swift’s personae

Abstract

This essay brings the example of Jonathan Swift’s literary personae to bear on current trends in satirical culture. A number of recent commentators have written of a crisis in contemporary British satire. They invoke Horkheimer and Adorno’s theory that comedy supports power interests which it purportedly undermines. The present essay maintains that Swift in a sense confirms this theory, but also that he sets another, more exacting standard for satire. Swiftian satire is singular if not unique in that it is openly self-disabling: in its highest form it deploys a persona that exhausts the resources of contemporary and classical theory. In doing so, it confronts its audiences with a complex and engaged expression of political helplessness. But it also uses irony to tell the truth. The standard Swift sets contemporary satire is an exacting one: to deliver an unflinching and, if necessary, vindictive testimony against injustice.