ABSTRACT
Jonathan Swift's work is a persisting miracle of how much commentary an author's writing can accommodate and still remain problematic. The efforts on his behalf have been mainly restorative, since few major authors in English have presented themselves so resolutely in a long series of occasional pieces that defy easy classification. It is against this ideological premise of fundamental appropriation that Swift's work militates. Yet the contrast between an event and writing as a substitute for an event is an important working opposition in Swift. The Tory policy Swift supported and wrote about was policy in the world of actuality: here he was an ecrivant. The Tory aristocracy of merit, which for Swift embodied the English people at their best, was dislodged from power by a Whig oligarchy of special interests. Here then Swift portrays himself in a state that is properly his own, the unity between decorum and liberty - a state that recalls Blackmur's phrase 'tory anarchy'.
