The essay investigates the background of what Melvyn New has called the transformation of Swift into an “ogre” and the beatification of Sterne as a master of benevolent humorism and modern sensibility; the tendency of contemporary Sterne scholarship, that is, to describe a “Swift without delight, a Swift separated from reality ... a straw figure required to form a contrast with lovable Sterne.” In this view, Swift becomes “the retrograde defender of a past world with his ‘savage indignation’ and a psychopath ‘tormented’ with a ‘passion to destroy,’” while Sterne is able to capture and relish “an absurd existential, indeterminate, postmodern world” and thus “remains in our world and is ‘one of us.’” William M. Thackeray contributed to the ‘malevolent Swift’ vs ‘benevolent Sterne’ dichotomy, yet this is an older story which goes back to the end of the eighteenth century, and which also owes much to the European reception of both authors, especially during the Romantic age and in the early nineteenth century. I propose to explore this story in its Italian context.

“Inverted Sublime”: Humorism in the Nineteenth-Century Italian Reception of Swift and Sterne

GREGORI, Flavio
2008-01-01

Abstract

The essay investigates the background of what Melvyn New has called the transformation of Swift into an “ogre” and the beatification of Sterne as a master of benevolent humorism and modern sensibility; the tendency of contemporary Sterne scholarship, that is, to describe a “Swift without delight, a Swift separated from reality ... a straw figure required to form a contrast with lovable Sterne.” In this view, Swift becomes “the retrograde defender of a past world with his ‘savage indignation’ and a psychopath ‘tormented’ with a ‘passion to destroy,’” while Sterne is able to capture and relish “an absurd existential, indeterminate, postmodern world” and thus “remains in our world and is ‘one of us.’” William M. Thackeray contributed to the ‘malevolent Swift’ vs ‘benevolent Sterne’ dichotomy, yet this is an older story which goes back to the end of the eighteenth century, and which also owes much to the European reception of both authors, especially during the Romantic age and in the early nineteenth century. I propose to explore this story in its Italian context.
2008
Reading Swift: Papers from the Fifth Muenster Symposium on Jonathan Swift
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10278/30359
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