Reviews for Jonathan Swift

The average rating for Jonathan Swift based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-01-19 00:00:00 Lawrence Egbert Just some notes to myself. Lionel Trilling: JA "was committed to the ideal of 'intelligent love,' according to which the deepest and truest relationship that can exist between human beings is pedagogic. This relationship consists in the giving and receiving of knowledge about right conduct, in the formation of one person's character by another, the acceptance of another's guidance in one's own growth." Julia Prewitt Brown: "The narrative voice [in contrast to the dialogue:], then, possesses the essential perspective of the novel. Although Austen's style has been compared to that of Henry James, her use of a vigorous and daunting narrative voice distinguishes them. This voice has more in common with that of the George Eliot narrator, whose all-inclusive compassion envelops the divisions and decay of the story, or that of the Fielding narrator, whose humor is equally tolerant." Ha ha! "Darcy's meeting with the excellent Gardiners, whose gentility is not diminished by the fact that they live within sight of their warehouses..." (David Monaghan)

Review # 2 was written on 2020-07-05 00:00:00 roger jackson Barely 60 pages in hardcover, this is an introduction to Pride and Prejudice that probably won't tell you anything new if you've read the book and might be hard to understand if you haven't. It has a synopsis and a list of major characters along with a short Austen biography, an introduction by Bloom, and a sampling of critics' reactions. It's not a difficult read, except that the criticism includes references to other Austen works without always naming them, so someone unfamiliar with Pride and Prejudice might get a bit lost. The back cover probably explains this book: "a definitive guide for independent study and a single source for footnoting essays and research papers." Otherwise I wouldn't be sure what its purpose is. Better to just read the novel itself, which is excellent.