Excremental recycling in selected writings of Edward Taylor and Jonathan Swift: A structuralist study in scatological humor and didactic accommodation
“Excremental” in this study not only refers to the words “dung” and “dunghill” in Swift, the Bible, and Taylor, but also in Taylor the words “draught,” “dumps,” and “slabbered.” Excremental language becomes “recycled” when its use de-emphasizes negative concepts of shame and degradation in favor of...
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| Format: | Dissertation |
| Language: | English |
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ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
01-01-2003
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| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | “Excremental” in this study not only refers to the words “dung” and “dunghill” in Swift, the Bible, and Taylor, but also in Taylor the words “draught,” “dumps,” and “slabbered.” Excremental language becomes “recycled” when its use de-emphasizes negative concepts of shame and degradation in favor of a positive emphasis upon humorous relief and theological didacticism. “Accommodation” refers to the difficulty of adapting knowledge of the supernatural, infinite God to the finite human capacity for understanding. My purpose in this dissertation is to examine Taylor and Swift as roughly contemporary excremental recyclers. Using a structural paradigm developed from the theoretical approaches of Mikhail Bakhtin and Mary Douglas as well as Calvinistic doctrine and Freudian psychology of humor, I find parallels between Swift and Taylor because both recycled excremental language into a rhetoric of humorous didacticism. For Taylor, such rhetoric reflects the primarily private paradoxical relationship between God and his elect during the earthly process of sanctification. In the more society-oriented work of Swift, excremental language serves to illuminate the problematic relationships among God, human beings, and the social order. In chapter one I summarize the theoretical underpinnings of my study. In chapter two I analyze Swift's use of recycled excremental language to confront human pride in self, tradition, and religion in A Tale of a Tub. In chapter three I explore a similar set of issues in Taylor's “Upon the Sweeping Flood Aug: 13.14.1683.” My discussion of Taylor continues in chapter four with an examination of Taylor's Preparatory Meditations First Series Numbers 21 and 40 and Second Series Numbers 25 and 43. In chapter five I conclude with the following suggestions. First, that consideration of the rhetorical function and thematic purposes of excremental language in both Swift and Taylor is key to a meaningful reading of these authors' texts. Second, that as a literary device, such language works as a healthy, rational dynamic to release a potent symbolic charge. Hopefully, by exploring the connections between scatological humor and concepts of status, social order, and religion in selected texts, I will render these texts more accessible to the modern reader. |
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| ISBN: | 0496375806 9780496375806 |