rofessor Hermann J. Real is director of the Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies at Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat, Munster, and editor of the Centre’s journal Swift Studies. He has edited five volumes of Proceedings of the Munster Symposium on Jonathan Swift and as well as The Reception of Jonathan Swift in Europe.

Hermann J. Real, ‘The Dean and the Lord Chancellor: or, Swift Saving his Bacon’

The ‘New Science’ of the seventeenth century rejected scholastic learning in favour of an empirical method based on experiment and close observation of physical phenomena. Practitioners of the new method such as Boyle, Hooke, and Newton worked in a field whose theoretical principles and parameters had been established by Francis Bacon, author of such foundational texts as The Advancement of Learning, Novum Organum and the utopian fantasy New Atlantis. This lecture discusses the influence of Bacon on Swift’s writing in general and on Gulliver’s Travels in particular. The lecture will also offer some reflections on current methodology in Swift studies and will discuss current and future directions for the study of Swift in the twenty-first century.

rofessor Robert Mahony is the author of Jonathan Swift: The Irish Identity. He was director of the Center for Irish Studies at the Catholic University of America, Washington D.C., and is the founder and director of the annual Jonathan Swift symposium at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

Robert Mahony, ‘Swift and the Irish Colonial Project’

When considering Swift’s motive in entangling himself in the affairs of Ireland, most contemporary commentators seem to accept some version of the longstanding Irish nationalist view of Swift: that he was in a genuine sense opposed to English misgovernment, without necessarily wanting to break the link with England. This view, though apparently nuanced, is still reductive. I would argue instead that Swift was in fact always a supporter of the Irish Colonial Project, for all his clear perception of its faults; and that such an understanding is well supported by an examination of two texts especially: Swift’s Abstract of The History of England (c. 1703), and Gulliver’s Travels.

rank Ferguson is a research associate in literature and language at the Institute of Ulster Scots Studies at the University of Ulster. He is the editor of Ulster-Scots Writing, an Anthology (Four Courts, Dublin:2008), co-editor and contributor to Ireland and Scotland in the nineteenth century (Four Courts, Dublin, 2009) and co-editor and contributor to Revising Robert Burns and Ulster: literature, religion, and politics c. 1770 to 1920 (Four Courts Dublin, 2009).