ABSTRACT
The Tale focuses on some of the key disagreements in modern critical theory. It has been possible to think of the Tale as embodying, as the Apology of 1710 so repeatedly suggests, 'the Author's Intentions', its satiric purpose being 'to expose the Abuses and Corruptions in Learning and Religion'. More recently, however, the discussion of A Tale of a Tub has been dominated by a very different argument: that, far from satirizing expressive and interpretative incoherence, the Tale is a narrative without an authoritative voice, which sets out to exemplify the inevitable polysemy of writing, and, more especially, of print. The arguments employed in these debates have significant resonances for modern textual and hermeneutic theory, and for the assessment of Swift's textual and hermeneutic position in the Tale. Criticism of A Tale of a Tub used to assume that Swift made a distinction between competent and incompetent writing.
