A Tale of a Tub
A Tale of a Tub was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift, arguably his most difficult satire and perhaps his most masterly. The "Tale" is a prose parody divided into sections each delving into the morals and ethics of the English. Composed between 1694 and 1697, it was eventually published in 1704. It was long regarded as a satire on religion, and has famously been attacked for that, starting with William Wotton.
Augustan prose
A single name overshadows all others in 18th-century prose satire: Jonathan Swift. Swift wrote poetry as well as prose, and his satires range over all topics. Critically, Swift's satire marked the development of prose parody away from simple satire or burlesque. A burlesque or lampoon in prose would imitate a despised author and quickly move to "reductio ad absurdum" by having the victim say things coarse or idiotic. On the other hand, other satires would argue against a habit, practice, or policy by making fun of its reach or composition or methods. What Swift did was to combine parody, with its imitation of form and style of another, and satire in prose. Swift's works would pretend to speak in the voice of an opponent and imitate the style of the opponent and have the parodic work itself be the satire: the imitation would have subtle betrayals of the argument but would not be obviously absurd. For example, in "A Modest Proposal" (1729), Swift imitates the "projector." As indicated above, the book shops were filled with single sheets and pamphlets proposing economic panacea. These projectors would slavishly write according to the rules of rhetoric that they had learned in school by stating the case, establishing that they have no interest in the outcome, and then offering a solution before enumerating the profits of the plan. Swift does the same, but the proposed solution (cannibalism) is immoral. There is very little "logically" wrong with the proposal, but it is unquestionably "morally" abhorrent, and it can only be acceptable if one regards the Irish as kine. The parody of an enemy is note-perfect, and the satire comes not from grotesque exaggerations of style, but in the extra-literary realm of morality and ethics.
Jonathan Swift's first major satire was "A Tale of a Tub" (1703–1705). That satire introduced an ancients/moderns division that would serve as a handy distinction between the old and new conception of value. The "moderns" sought trade, empirical science, the individual's reason above the society's, and the rapid dissemination of knowledge, while the "ancients" believed in inherent and immanent value of birth, the society over the individual's determinations of the good, and rigorous education. In Swift's satire, the moderns come out looking insane and proud of their insanity, dismissive of the value of history, and incapable of understanding figurative language because unschooled. In Swift's most significant satire, "Gulliver's Travels" (1726), autobiography, allegory, and philosophy mix together in the travels. Under the umbrella of a parody of travel writing (such as Defoe's, but more particularly the fantastic and oriental tales that were circulating in London), Swift's Gulliver travels to Liliput, a figurative London beset by a figurative Paris, and sees all of the factionalism and schism as trifles of small men. He travels then to an idealized nation with a philosopher king in Brobdingnag, where Gulliver's own London is summed up in the king's saying, "I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of odious little vermin Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the face of the earth." Gulliver then moves beyond the philosophical kingdom to the land of the Houyhnhnms, a society of horses ruled by pure reason, where humanity itself is portrayed as a group of "yahoos" covered in filth and dominated by base desires. Swift later added a new third book to the satire, a heterogeneous book of travels to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubdubdribb, Luggnagg, and Japan. This book's primary satire is on empiricsim and the Royal Society, whose reports Swift read. "Projectors" of all sorts live in the Academy of Lagado, a flying island (London) that saps all the nourishment from the land below (the countryside) and occasionally crushes, literally, troublesome cities (Dublin). Thematically, "Gulliver's Travels" is a critique of human vanity, of pride. Book one begins with the world as it is. Book two shows that an ideal philosopher kingdom is no home for a contemporary Englishman. Book three shows the uselessness and actual evil of indulging the passions of science without connection to the realm of simple production and consumption. Book four shows that, indeed, the very desire for reason may be undesirable, and humans must struggle to be neither Yahoos nor Houhynymns.