Paper 102 : Words Against the World: Jonathan Swift’s Attack on Hypocrisy, Pedantry, and Pretension in 'A Tale of a Tub'

This blog is a part of the assignment of Paper 102: Literature of the Neo-classical Period

Academic Details

• Name: Sandhya Bhut
• Roll No.: 27
• Enrollment No.: 5108250004
• Sem.: 1
• Batch: 2025 - 2026
• E-mail: sandhyabhut06@gmail.com

Assignment Details

• Paper Name: Literature of the Neo-classical Period
• Paper No.: 102
• Paper Code: 22393
• Unit: 1 - Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub 
• Topic: Words Against the World: Jonathan Swift’s Attack on Hypocrisy, Pedantry, and Pretension in 'A Tale of a Tub'
• Submitted To: Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
• Submitted Date: November 10, 2025

The following information—numbers are counted using QuillBot.

• Images: 2
• Words: 2856
• Characters: 18957
• Characters without spaces: 15909
• Paragraphs: 65
• Sentences: 204
• Reading time: 11m 25s

Table of Contents

1. Abstract 
2. Keywords 
3. Introduction
4. Jonathan Swift and the Age of Satire 
5. Hypocrisy in Religion: The Moral Mask
6. Pedantry and the Corruption of Learning 
7. Pretension in Society and Literature
8. The Unreliable Narrator and the Reader’s Role 
9. The Voice of Satire: Style, Structure, and Symbolism 
10. The Modern Relevance of Swift’s Critique 
11. Conclusion
12. References

1. Abstract:

Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub (1704) stands as one of the most brilliant, complex, and controversial satires in English literature. Written in an age that worshipped reason yet suffered from corruption, Swift’s work exposes the absurdities of human pretension in religion, scholarship, and society. Through the shifting voice of an unreliable narrator, he attacks the hypocrisy of religious leaders, the pedantry of scholars, and the empty vanity of modern writers. Swift’s satire is not merely an exercise in wit but a moral act a defense of truth against deceit, humility against arrogance, and integrity against corruption. This essay explores how A Tale of a Tub becomes Swift’s “word against the world,” using irony, allegory, and digression to unveil the false pieties and intellectual posturing of his age. The discussion also examines the text’s continuing relevance in exposing hypocrisy in modern institutions of faith, knowledge, and media.

2. Keywords: 

Jonathan Swift; A Tale of a Tub; satire; religious hypocrisy; intellectual pretension; pedantry; allegory; irony; moral critique; Enlightenment; human corruption; social criticism; parody; digression; eighteenth-century literature

3. Introduction:

      Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub is one of the earliest and boldest expressions of the writer’s fierce moral intelligence. Composed at the dawn of the eighteenth century, a period marked by religious conflict, intellectual pride, and social transformation, the work captures the contradictions of an age that prized reason but often misused it. Swift’s satire is an act of defiance, a verbal rebellion against the spiritual and intellectual arrogance that he believed had infected the modern world. The “tale” in its title conceals a biting allegory, while the “tub” becomes a symbol of distraction thrown to a whale representing the public to divert it from pursuing genuine moral depth.

        Swift’s target is vast. He exposes the hypocrisy of the clergy who exploit religion for personal ambition, the pedantry of scholars who bury truth under mountains of useless learning, and the pretension of writers who imitate reason but ignore wisdom. In each case, Swift uses wit and irony not only to ridicule but also to correct. His purpose is moral, though his tone is mischievous; his laughter is sharp, but it is meant to awaken conscience. In this sense, A Tale of a Tub is Swift’s declaration of war against falsehood in all its forms, a work that uses words as weapons to defend sanity and virtue.

      This essay explores Swift’s attack on hypocrisy, pedantry, and pretension in A Tale of a Tub, analyzing how the text functions as both satire and moral allegory. It examines the religious allegory of the three brothers, the intellectual digressions that parody scholarly pride, and the broader cultural critique that unmasks the follies of modern life. The discussion also considers how Swift’s style, his deliberate confusion, irony, and fragmentation mirrors the corruption he condemns.

4. Jonathan Swift and the Age of Satire 

           To understand A Tale of a Tub, one must first understand Swift’s age. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries witnessed the rise of new philosophies, sciences, and religious controversies. The Protestant Reformation had left behind competing sects, each claiming spiritual authority. Meanwhile, intellectuals like Bacon, Locke, and Newton celebrated human reason as the highest faculty of truth. Swift viewed both tendencies with suspicion. He saw religion turning into rivalry and learning turning into arrogance.

         Born in 1667, Swift lived through an era of political instability and moral confusion. The Restoration had restored monarchy but also indulgence; the Glorious Revolution promised liberty but produced new hypocrisies. As a clergyman in the Church of Ireland, Swift knew the weaknesses of religious institutions from within. His faith was genuine, but his loyalty was to truth, not to any faction. In A Tale of a Tub, this independence of mind finds artistic expression. The work mocks both papist superstition and Protestant enthusiasm, both classical pedantry and modern arrogance.

       Swift’s satire belongs to a long tradition from Juvenal to Erasmus but he transformed that tradition into something uniquely English and modern. Unlike polite satirists, Swift’s tone is fierce; his laughter cuts deep because it springs from moral conviction. A Tale of a Tub became notorious for its irreverence, yet behind the apparent blasphemy lies profound moral seriousness. Swift attacks not faith itself, but those who pervert it; not learning itself, but its misuse; not society, but its self-deception. His “tale” is thus an act of ethical rebellion a mirror held to a world that had lost its sense of proportion.

5. Hypocrisy in Religion: The Moral Mask

        At the heart of A Tale of a Tub lies the allegory of the three brothers Peter, Martin, and Jack who represent the three main branches of Western Christianity: Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Puritanism. Their father’s will symbolizes divine revelation, instructing them to preserve their coats (their faith) without alteration. Yet the brothers soon begin to modify their garments to suit the fashions of the world. In this deceptively simple fable, Swift exposes the moral decay within organized religion.

       Peter, the representative of the Roman Church, is arrogant, ostentatious, and domineering. He adds ornaments and trimmings to his coat, symbolizing the accumulation of dogma, ritual, and papal authority. Swift ridicules this corruption by showing how Peter justifies every alteration through forced interpretation of the will, a satire on theological sophistry and institutional greed. The humor is sharp but not cruel; it reflects Swift’s belief that the Church’s greatest enemy is not heresy but hypocrisy.

        Jack, the figure of Protestant dissenters, fares no better. His zeal for purity turns into madness; in tearing away all decoration, he mutilates his coat beyond recognition. Swift here attacks fanaticism the hypocrisy of those who claim holiness while practicing intolerance. Jack’s destruction of his garment becomes a parable of spiritual pride disguised as humility. Between Peter’s pomp and Jack’s frenzy stands Martin, the Anglican, who tries to preserve moderation. Yet even Martin is not free from vanity. Swift thus suggests that hypocrisy is not confined to any sect; it is a universal temptation of fallen humanity.

      Through this allegory, Swift dramatizes a spiritual disease. Religion, meant to unite, becomes a theater of hypocrisy where faith serves ambition and ritual replaces conscience. The narrator’s mock-serious tone amplifies the absurdity: theological debates sound like quarrels over tailoring. By reducing sacred controversies to trivial squabbles, Swift exposes how far religious leaders have strayed from the simplicity of genuine faith. His satire thus restores perspective, reminding readers that humility, not hierarchy, is the essence of religion.

6. Pedantry and the Corruption of Learning

      If hypocrisy is the corruption of faith, pedantry is the corruption of reason. Swift viewed both as twin diseases of the modern mind. In A Tale of a Tub, his attack on pedantry takes the form of digressions long, absurd sections where the narrator indulges in pseudo-scholarship, pompous reasoning, and empty display of learning. These digressions parody the academic writing of Swift’s age: full of Latin quotations, false erudition, and self-importance.

        The narrator constantly boasts of his “profound” insights while saying nothing of substance. He cites imaginary authorities, fabricates experiments, and pretends to systematize nonsense. Through this mock-scholarly voice, Swift exposes the vanity of intellectuals who confuse verbosity with wisdom. The pedant, in Swift’s view, is a hypocrite of reason someone who worships learning as an idol rather than using it as a tool for truth.

        This criticism was deeply rooted in Swift’s moral philosophy. He believed that knowledge should serve virtue, not vanity. In his time, the explosion of scientific societies, pamphlets, and “modern” writings often replaced judgment with jargon. Swift mocks this trend mercilessly. The narrator’s obsession with terminology and structure mirrors a world that values appearance over substance. His endless digressions represent a mind detached from reality a satire not only of individuals but of an entire intellectual culture.

        Yet beneath the laughter lies sorrow. Swift was himself a scholar, deeply read and disciplined. His anger at pedantry springs from love for true learning, just as his attack on hypocrisy springs from reverence for genuine faith. He mocks the false scholar to defend the true one, who seeks clarity, humility, and moral purpose. In this sense, A Tale of a Tub becomes a defense of wisdom against cleverness a reminder that intellect without virtue degenerates into absurdity.

7. Pretension in Society and Literature

         Swift’s satire reaches beyond religion and learning to the broader pretensions of modern society. The narrator, ever eager to impress, embodies the fashionable writer of the early eighteenth century: self-satisfied, shallow, and obsessed with novelty. His style imitates the very writers Swift despised those who wrote for fame rather than truth. By parodying their tone and manner, Swift reveals how literature itself had become infected with pretension.

        The eighteenth century witnessed a flood of pamphlets, essays, and pseudo-philosophical works. Swift’s narrator mocks this phenomenon by presenting himself as a man of “great wit and judgment,” though his reasoning is ludicrous. His self-contradictions, pedantic footnotes, and erratic logic expose the emptiness of literary vanity. Through him, Swift satirizes the new cult of the author a world where everyone claimed to be an innovator, yet few possessed genuine understanding.

       The pretension Swift targets is not only intellectual but moral. His narrator speaks with the authority of a reformer but acts with the blindness of a fool. He criticizes others while revealing his own corruption. This irony turns the narrative into a mirror of society, where moral posturing replaces moral action. The digressions on critics, authors, and learning become miniature portraits of a culture addicted to appearance.

        In attacking pretension, Swift defends authenticity. His satire strips away the masks that society wears religious, academic, and literary to reveal the emptiness beneath. The “words against the world” of the title are thus acts of purification: by ridiculing falsehood, Swift restores the possibility of sincerity. His laughter is not cynical but corrective; it seeks to shame folly into wisdom.

8. The Unreliable Narrator and the Reader’s Role

      In A Tale of a Tub, the narrator is far more than a comic foil he is the very instrument through which Swift delivers his moral and intellectual critique. By adopting an unreliable, self-absorbed, and often contradictory voice, Swift compels readers to think actively, question conventional authority, and navigate layers of meaning hidden beneath apparent absurdity. The narrator’s shifting tones from earnest seriousness to extravagant folly mirror the duality of human nature: our capacity for insight and virtue, shadowed by the ever-present temptation of pride, vanity, and self-deception.

        This narrative strategy transforms reading into an ethical exercise. Every digression, every exaggerated claim, every mock-scholarly footnote challenges readers to separate truth from artifice. Far from passively absorbing the text, audiences are invited into a dialogue with Swift himself, weighing, judging, and even confronting their own potential complicity in the follies being satirized. In this way, the unreliable narrator is not just a literary device but a mirror: reflecting human weakness, prompting self-examination, and turning the act of reading into a rigorous exploration of reason, judgment, and moral discernment. Swift’s genius lies in making laughter both entertaining and ethically illuminating forcing us to recognize folly in the world and, more importantly, within ourselves.

9. The Voice of Satire: Style, Structure, and Symbolism

          Swift’s method in A Tale of a Tub is as subversive as his message. The text defies the reader’s expectations at every turn. Its structure is fragmented, alternating between the main allegory and digressions that seem unrelated but are thematically connected. This deliberate confusion mirrors the intellectual chaos of the age. The narrator’s shifting tone serious, absurd, scholarly, and hysterical forces readers to question every claim. In this way, Swift teaches skepticism: the very act of reading becomes an exercise in critical judgment.

        Symbolism deepens the satire. The tub, thrown out to distract a whale, represents literature used to divert rather than enlighten a jab at writers who entertain without substance. The coats of the brothers stand for spiritual integrity; their embellishment signifies corruption. Even the narrator himself is symbolic: he embodies the modern mind clever, restless, and self-deceived. Through these symbols, Swift transforms satire into moral allegory.

       Irony is the lifeblood of the text. Almost every statement means more or less than it says. The narrator’s false learning and confident absurdities create a double vision: we laugh at him but also at ourselves, for sharing his weaknesses. Swift’s mastery lies in this psychological depth. He does not simply mock; he implicates the reader in the very follies he describes.

        The digressive structure, often criticized by early readers, becomes a powerful satirical device. It dramatizes the loss of coherence in modern thought. Just as the narrator wanders from his subject, society wanders from truth. The style itself becomes a metaphor for corruption: language, like faith and reason, has lost its order. Yet within this chaos, Swift imposes a hidden discipline; every absurdity serves a purpose, every irony conceals a moral. The result is a satire that operates simultaneously on the levels of form and content a true masterpiece of intellectual artistry.

10. The Modern Relevance of Swift’s Critique 

         Though written over three centuries ago, A Tale of a Tub remains strikingly modern. The vices Swift attacked hypocrisy, pedantry, and pretension continue to dominate public life. Religious hypocrisy survives in the form of moral grandstanding; intellectual pedantry thrives in bureaucratic jargon and academic vanity; social pretension flourishes in digital culture, where appearance often replaces authenticity.

         Swift’s warning is therefore timeless. He teaches that corruption begins not in institutions but in individuals who mistake self-interest for principle. His attack on false learning anticipates modern anxieties about the misuse of knowledge. In an era overwhelmed by information, his satire reminds us that intelligence without moral direction is dangerous.

     Moreover, Swift’s method of satire using irony to expose falsehood remains a model for writers and critics. In a world flooded with rhetoric, propaganda, and superficial commentary, his demand for clarity and sincerity is more relevant than ever. A Tale of a Tub thus transcends its historical context; it speaks to any age where truth is compromised by pride.

        Swift’s “words against the world” challenge readers to confront their own complicity. His laughter is not comfortable but cleansing; it forces us to see through the disguises of our own hypocrisy. Whether in religion, academia, or politics, his voice still demands honesty. He reminds us that wisdom begins with humility and that satire, when guided by conscience, remains one of the most powerful instruments of moral renewal.

11. Conclusion

           In A Tale of a Tub, Jonathan Swift wields satire as a moral sword. His attack on hypocrisy, pedantry, and pretension is not merely a display of wit but an act of ethical resistance. Through allegory, irony, and digression, he exposes the spiritual and intellectual corruption of his age. The brothers’ altered coats, the narrator’s absurd digressions, and the pervasive irony all serve one purpose: to reveal the distance between appearance and reality.

         Swift’s genius lies in his ability to make laughter a weapon of truth. His satire demolishes falsehood not by preaching but by parody. The reader who laughs at Peter’s arrogance, Jack’s frenzy, or the narrator’s vanity ultimately laughs at the universal human tendency toward deceit. A Tale of a Tub thus becomes a moral mirror, reflecting not only the follies of the eighteenth century but the perennial flaws of human nature.

          To read Swift is to be challenged. His words unsettle because they are rooted in conviction; they strike against the world’s complacency. In an age of hypocrisy, pedantry, and pretension then and now Swift’s voice still echoes as a call to integrity. He reminds us that truth must often speak through satire, and that laughter, when sharpened by conscience, can be the purest form of wisdom.

12. References :

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Haslett, Moyra. Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an Dá Chultúr, vol. 26, 2011, pp. 200–02. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23365322. Accessed 6 Nov. 2025.

Swift, Jonathan. A Tale of a Tub. Project Gutenberg, 2015, www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4737/pg4737-images.html.

Swift, Jonathan, et al. A Tale of a Tub, and Other Works. Oxford University Press, 2008, Amazon, Accessed 06 Nov. 2025. 

Levine, Jay Arnold. “The Design of A Tale of a Tub (with a Digression on a Mad Modern Critic).” ELH, vol. 33, no. 2, 1966, pp. 198–227. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2872390. Accessed 6 Nov. 2025.

Lockwood, Thomas F. The Life of Jonathan Swift: A Critical Biography. 1st ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2023, Amazon, Accessed 06 Nov. 2025.

Stout, Gardner D. “Speaker and Satiric Vision in Swift’s Tale of a Tub.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 3, no. 2, 1969, pp. 175–99. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2737572. Accessed 6 Nov. 2025.

Williams, Abigail, and Kate O’Connor. “Jonathan Swift and ‘A Tale of a Tub.’” Great Writers Inspire, 4 July 2012, writersinspire.org/content/jonathan-swift-tale-tub. Accessed 06 Nov. 2025.

Walsh, Marcus. “Text, ‘Text’, and Swift’s ‘A Tale of a Tub.’” The Modern Language Review, vol. 85, no. 2, 1990, pp. 290–303. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3731810. Accessed 6 Nov. 2025.