Swift, Temple, Defoe, and the Jesuits

Title

Swift, Temple, Defoe, and the Jesuits

Author

Donald STONE

Page

313-336

DOI

10.6163/tjeas.2011.8(2)313

Abstract

The glowing accounts of China that Jesuit missionaries in the 17(superscript th) Century sent back to Europe had great influence on such Enlightenment figures as Leibniz in Germany, Voltaire in France, and Sir William Temple in England. Among Temple's younger contemporaries influenced by his views of China was his secretary (and distant relative) Jonathan Swift, whose masterpiece, ”Gulliver's Travels” (1726), contains thematic and verbal echoes of Temple. While the first and third books of ”Gulliver's Travels” are largely satires of Swift's England, the second and fourth books contain echoes of the Confucian system of values praised by Temple- values conspicuously absent in England. Some Europeans, however, were unimpressed by the Jesuit reports, notably Daniel Defoe, whose novel ”The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” (1719) mocks China and its lack of a Protestant work ethic. In the contrasting attitudes taken toward China by Defoe and Temple (and, by inference, Swift) we can see how the Enlightenment image of a Confucian Utopia gave way- as Defoe's mercantile class came to power- to the negative image of the Celestial Empire of early modem times.

Keyword

Jesuit Missionaries, Enlightenment images of China, Confucian values, Protestant work ethic, Confucian Utopia, Celestial Empire, satire

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