ABSTRACT
In an age given to protective pen names and anonymous authorship, Swift stands out as a particularly resolute concealer of his proper name. Swift's evasive authorial tactics shielded him from censure and, at times, prosecution while allowing him to write freely in a variety of modes on a variety of subjects. Swift divests himself of authority by creating an authorial character that he invests with an individual shaping voice and set of attitudes, then divests this character of an authorizing proper name so that Swift can reinvest himself in the reopened possibilities of the text. Swift frequently refers to this inherited metaphor, and he integrates its emphasis on self-revelation with his own emphasis on man's ability to delude himself. Gulliver resembles the word gullible, an appropriate description of the voyager's impressionability. Gulliver is victimized by his own reflections because his imagination escapes the constraints of reality. Gulliver has confused metonymy with metaphor; he has mistaken physical proximity for conceptual similarity.
