| dc.description.abstract | In A Tale of A Tub, "Battle of the Books," and "The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit," Swift consistently uses the technique of diminution. Beaumont's Swift's Classical Rhetoric traces Swift's use of diminution in tracts such as "A Modest Proposal." Martin Price's Swift's Rhetorical Art focuses on how Swift uses inversion to achieve diminution's satiric effect. Clearly, diminution is an important weapon in Swift's arsenal because it enables him to achieve the vicious ironies that mark his satire. In the three works above, diminution is suggestive of more than a technical use of a rhetorical device for a specific purpose. The reductive nature of diminution reflects the major reason that Swift attacked the physico-theologists. The assumption that one can understand and explain God's laws reduces the power of God while simultaneously puffing up the importance of the interpreters. If this argument is granted, then one can readily understand why Tale of Tub was intended to be an attack against corruption in learning and religion. In his attack Swift delineates the consequences of this reductive-augmentive paradox. This study will show how these three works attack physico-theology on political, religious, philosophical, and linguistic grounds. Because Swift uses a persona in these three works, the major focus will be to show to what extent the persona and his observations and perceptions may be seen as representative of those that Swift would associate with the physico-theologists. | en |
