Jonathan Swift and Popular Culture

"Ann Cline Kelly's book breaks the mold of Swift studies. Twentieth-century scholars have tended to assess Jonathan Swift as a pillar of the eighteenth-century "republic of letters," a conservative, even reactionary voice upholding classical values against the welling tide of popularization in literature. She argues instead that Swift, recognizing the power of the popular press to transform cultural realities, turned his back on the elite to write for an inclusive audience, and in the process, annexed scandals to his fictionalized print alter ego that created a continual demand for works by or about this self-mythologized figure."--BOOK JACKET.