ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overall view of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with political life of Jonathan Swift, and argues that the pervasive, brutal fact of war was central to all of Swift's writing. Like many in his society, Swift was haunted by the cultural memory of war, by experience of current war, and by anticipation of imminent wars. Swift's political writings all spring from his immediate involvement with a particular place at a particular moment. The twin facts of war and Ireland set the limits even to Swift's ability to imagine a utopian society. The book also covers Gulliver's Travels, not for the dense texture of allusions to contemporary politics, the subject of many studies and annotations, but for a comic pattern solidly grounded in Swift's political career. Gulliver's Travels reflects as comedy the question at the centre of his political life.
