Swift's Tale of a Tub Compared With Earlier Satires of the Puritans

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Abstract
Swift wrote brilliantly of the Dissenter, or Puritan, as revealed in the person of Jack, one of the three brothers in the Tale of a Tub, but there was a century of attack on the Puritans behind him. It is not the purpose of this paper to try to show that Swift was influenced by earlier writers. All that will be attempted is the analysis of the various themes of the attack on the Puritans in the Tale of a Tub, and a comparison of the results with those obtained from a similar analysis of the more prominent earlier satires of the Puritans. There may well have been various influences of earlier men on Swift, but, as has been said, this question will not be raised. The real contribution of Swift—what he alone thought and said about the Dissenters—will be more easily seen if we first eliminate the themes which had already been used. Of equal importance is the listing of the points Swift definitely avoided using or emphasizing but which the earlier men had delighted in employing.

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