Splitting Allegiances: A Reading of Swift's On the Words – Brother Protestants, and Fellow Christians

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This essay looks at one of Swift's most intriguing late poems, called 'On the Words — Brother Protestants, and Fellow Christians' (1733). The poem has long been recognised an important - if minor - composition, usually because of the (limited but persuasive) evidence it provides of Swift's views on the Test Act. However, the poem has rarely received any sustained close-reading which attends to its rhetorical strategies, its peculiar verbal behaviour, or inner networks of literary allusion. Such a reading proves that this is one of Swift's most compelling and complex poems.