Thinking activity on A Tale of a Tub

 A Tale of a Tub. Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind. 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. A satire on the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches and English Dissenters, it was famously attacked for its profanity and irreligion, starting with William Wotton, who wrote that the Tale had made a game of "God and Religion, Truth and Moral Honesty, Learning and Industry" to show "at the bottom [the author's] contemptible Opinion of every Thing which is called Christianity."The work continued to be regarded as an attack on religion well into the nineteenth century.

The Tale was enormously popular, presenting both a satire of religious excess and a parody of contemporary writing in literature, politics, theology, Biblical exegesis, and medicine through its comically excessive front matter and series of digressions throughout. The overarching parody is of enthusiasm, pride, and credulity. At the time it was written, politics and religion were still closely linked in England, and the religious and political aspects of the satire can often hardly be separated. "The work made Swift notorious, and was widely misunderstood, especially by Queen Anne herself who mistook its purpose for profanity." It "effectively disbarred its author from proper preferment" in the Church of England,but is considered one of Swift's best allegories, even by himself.

Reading materials.

1] Religious hypocrisy 

2]  Title and structure , Authorship and identity, originality, the Ancients and moderns , parody and allegory.

Answer the questions given below.

1) Do you find any kind of stress that can prove religious hypocrisy in  "A Tale of tub" ?

2) Why there's doubt on the authorship of Jonathan Swift as the writer of a tale of tub? Give appropriate arguments. Like, Why is it doubtful ? 

3) Is this work an original work of the writer or Is it borrowed from the other writers ? 

4) At the end of this parody, Why it became a fight between modern versus ancient ? Can you define that with the special reference of A Tale of tub ?

5) According to you, Is it a parody or an allegory ? Or Is it a mixture of both literary genre?  

Work citation

1) (2020) A Tale of a Tub. In: Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_of_a_Tub. Accessed 16 Dec 2020

2) Cite:Jonathan Swift and 'A Tale of a Tub' by Abigail Williams, Kate O'Connor at http://writersinspire.org/content/jonathan-swift-tale-tub. Accessed on Wednesday, December 16, 2020.