ABSTRACT
Narrative tends to represent itself as a version of the flux of life, always including too much to be intelligible without some systematic reduction. Satire has an obvious affinity to allegory, although only some satires are accepted as allegorical. Both presume that reader and author share a context that remains incompletely represented in the narrative. Satire is static and conceptual; narrative is a process and evades conceptualization. Satire often uses allegory to reveal the gap between earthly process and moral imperative. Jonathan Swift exposes the literariness of satire, just as Lucian exposes Homeric epic. Satire defines itself as nonliterature, making its words represent the filthy things themselves and its judgments those of nature. For Swift, satire is not a privileged form, and its author is not exempted from explicit scrutiny. There is finally no conflict between the polemical purposes and the literary forms of Swift's narrative satires. Swift's most inclusive polemical purpose is to allow no privileged human perspective.
