What Do Young Men Know? All-Too-Powerful Inferences Masquerading as Facts
In: Reading Swift
Author:
Eugene Hammond
Eugene Hammond
Stony Brook University
New York
Search for other papers by Eugene Hammond in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Eugene Hammond in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Abstract
Jonathan Swift’s first three full-length biographers – the Earl of Orrery, Deane Swift, and the younger Thomas Sheridan – were all young men when they met Swift, and in preparing for their publications were able to learn very little about Swift’s first thirty years. Consequently, they frequently drew ill-founded inferences about Swift’s early years, which later biographers have too often taken for facts, and which in turn too often have been used to explain and interpret Swift’s later works. As we move forward in Swift biography and criticism, we should be more conscious than we have been of how fragile these inferences are when we are tempted to lean on them.