Jonathan Swift's 1700 satire A Tale of a Tub uses the allegory of three brothers (representing Anglicanism, Catholicism, and Protestant dissent) inheriting their father's will and coats to criticize religious deviations from biblical truth. The document analyzes how each brother comes to alter their coat, with Peter (Catholicism) initiating most changes and Jack's reforms (Calvinism) being most enthusiastic. It concludes Swift aimed to show non-Anglican spiritual practices were falsely interpreting scripture, though many readers saw the work as attacking all religion due to its confusing satire.

1. A Tale of a Tub
as a religious
allegory
Jonathan Swift

2. Prepared by Gayatri Nimavat
Roll no. : 9
M.A semester 1. Batch : 2022-24
Paper 102 Literature of the Neoclassical age
Email id: gayatrinimavat128@gmail.com
Enrollment no. : 4069206420220019
Submitted to Department of English, MKBU

3. Table of contents
1 2 3 4
Introduction
About
Author
Religion
Aspects
False
alternatives
‘PK' and religion
5

4. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
● Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish
author, who was the foremost prose
satirist in the English language.
● Besides the celebrated novel ‘Gulliver’s
Travels’ (1726), he wrote such shorter
works as ‘A Tale of a Tub’ (1704) and ‘A
Modest Proposal’(1729). (Quintana)

5. ● A Tale of a Tub is Swift's first important
prose work.
● It was written during the 1690s, when
Swift was living with his patron Sir
William Temple, and it was published in
1704.
● It is a prose satire intended as a defence
of the Anglican church, but it was widely
interpreted by contemporary readers as
an attack on all religion.
Introduction

6. Religion Aspects
● A Tale of a Tub was partly intended to
attack the religious groups that Swift
saw as threatening the hegemony of the
Anglican church.
● In the Tale, Swift uses the analogy of
the three brothers - Martin, Peter and
Jack - to represent, respectively, the
Anglican Church, the Catholic Church,
and the Low Church, or Dissenters.

7. Symbols of religion
Three Brothers Father
The Will
of father
Three coats
Peter: Roman
catholic Church
Martin:Anglican
Church
Jack: Protestant
church or Dissenters
God Bible
Three
Religions
Practices

8. False Alternatives
● In the narrative portions of A Tale of a
Tub, Swift makes a claim about the true
practice of Christianity by satirizing the
various false alternatives.
● In altering their coats and deviating
from their father's Will, the three
brothers in the story to various
degrees are rejecting the Bible as the
overarching guide to church doctrine
and discipline.

9. ● Peter, the brother who represents the
Catholic tradition, initiates most of the
changes the three brothers make to their
coats.
● Swift writes more admiringly of Martin,
who represents Martin Luther and by
extension the mainline Protestant
tradition that Luther is credited with
founding.
● Jack's reforms (those of Calvinism and its
successors) even more enthusiastically
than Martin's.

10. ‘PK' and Religion
● PK tells the story of an alien who
lands in India and ends up
questioning religious dogma and
traditions.
● Here the protagonist too says that he
keeps on trying, following the
customs and ways to find God,
though here he seems to have lost his
patience as he desperately asks God
‘Where he is’

11. ● An innate component of this religious
ethos is the presence of a deep rooted
cult of ‘godmen’ in Indian society, which
encompasses various faiths and
cultural practices.
● ‘Religion’ can be seen as a medium in
itself; it is sometimes considered to
form a channel between the self and
God that consists of a set of
institutions, authorities and practices,
such as churches, holy texts and
preachers.

12. Conclusion
Jonathan Swift is trying to demonstrate that the
spiritual practices of the Catholic Church and
dissenting sects were based on a false interpretation
of the true Word, the Bible. However, the sweep of
Swift's irony in the book, and, the destabilising and
confusing nature of its changes in satiric personae
meant that many of his contemporaries read the Tale
as an attack all religion.

13. Works Cited
Course Hero. "A Tale of a Tub Study Guide." Course Hero. 6 Dec. 2019. Web. 6 Oct. 2022.
<https://www.coursehero.com/lit/A-Tale-of-a-Tub/>.
Qadri, Mufli, Monisa, Sabeha. "Films and Religion: An Analysis of Aamir Khan’s PK,", Journal of Religion and
Film: Vol. 20, 2016, digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol20/iss1/9.
Quintana, Ricardo. "Jonathan Swift". Encyclopedia Britannica, 14 Sep. 2022,
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jonathan-Swift. Accessed 10 October 2022.
Sony, Live, director. PK. Sonylive.com, UTV Motion Pictures , 2014, www.sonyliv.com/movies/pk-1000041836.
William, Abigail, Kate O'Connor. 'A Tale of a Tub', Jonathan Swift
http://writersinspire.org/content/jonathan-swift-tale-tub. Published on 04 july 2012. Accessed on 06
October 2022.

14. Thank you