(Editor’s Advice: If you don’t know who Colly Cibber is, you probably shouldn’t read this piece.) In one of W. H. Auden’s essays, he remarks that English literature had a strong tendency to become a sort of cozy, family affair, full of in-jokes that bound everyone who was in together and excluded all those who…
Tag: Jonathan Swift
Donald’s got a brand new tub!
A few weeks back, I noted that Donald Trump’s rejection of the Paris accords on global warming amounted to a “tub”, a high-visibility, low-significance virtual non-issue that would nevertheless promote much angst and heartburn among the liberal commentariat, both printwise and in talking-heads land, accompanied, in both media, by endless shots of El Donaldo’s great,…
Donald and the Paris accords—a tale of a tub
Back in the day, as only old-timey English majors would know, a dude named Jonathan Swift wrote A Tale of a Tub, which Swift, wrapping himself in multiple layers of irony, describes as a sort of prelude to a great work of immense learning that will resolve all the tensions of the age. In the…