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Swift's Irish Rhymes

Swift's Irish Rhymes Swift’s Irish Rhymes by Jonathan Pritchard ENCIL and paper in hand, the Dean of St. Patrick’s would sit in his cathedral, listening to the preacher’s sermon. ‘‘As soon as any Pone got up into the pulpit,’’ the Reverend Patrick Delany recalled, Jonathan Swift ‘‘carefully noted every wrong pronunciation, or expres- sion, that fell from him.’’ Delany’s witness is valuable not only because it reminds us that Swift took seriously his decanal responsibilities, but also because it suggests that his interest in norms of pronunciation was more searching than is often assumed. (It is also a good story: ‘‘care- fully’’ sells the humor of the scene.) Pronunciation is apt to be regarded as an aspect of Swift’s enduring interest in the vernacular, its cant and jargon, gossip and chit-chat, street cries and billingsgate, and their shift- lessness or futility: much of the material adduced in A Complete Collec- tion of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (1738) concerns the voicing of the spontaneous, the trivial, and the evanescent. The importance of the correct rehearsing of a text—and in this regard Swift drew no distinc- tion between the sacred and profane, or between verse and prose—is nonetheless realized in a variety of tracts, http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Studies in Philology University of North Carolina Press

Swift's Irish Rhymes

Studies in Philology , Volume 104 (1) – Feb 22, 2007

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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 The University of North Carolina Press.
ISSN
1543-0383

Abstract

Swift’s Irish Rhymes by Jonathan Pritchard ENCIL and paper in hand, the Dean of St. Patrick’s would sit in his cathedral, listening to the preacher’s sermon. ‘‘As soon as any Pone got up into the pulpit,’’ the Reverend Patrick Delany recalled, Jonathan Swift ‘‘carefully noted every wrong pronunciation, or expres- sion, that fell from him.’’ Delany’s witness is valuable not only because it reminds us that Swift took seriously his decanal responsibilities, but also because it suggests that his interest in norms of pronunciation was more searching than is often assumed. (It is also a good story: ‘‘care- fully’’ sells the humor of the scene.) Pronunciation is apt to be regarded as an aspect of Swift’s enduring interest in the vernacular, its cant and jargon, gossip and chit-chat, street cries and billingsgate, and their shift- lessness or futility: much of the material adduced in A Complete Collec- tion of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (1738) concerns the voicing of the spontaneous, the trivial, and the evanescent. The importance of the correct rehearsing of a text—and in this regard Swift drew no distinc- tion between the sacred and profane, or between verse and prose—is nonetheless realized in a variety of tracts,

Journal

Studies in PhilologyUniversity of North Carolina Press

Published: Feb 22, 2007

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