The Question of Bad Writing in Swift and PopeThe 18th century witnessed a major revolution, in some ways more profound than the Civil War, in printing. It was a state of anarchy in which struggling writers from the lower strata wrote in journals, newspapers, magazines, etc. The widespread consumption of this type of writing led to the formation of Grub Street (a street in London inhabited by literary people). hackers such as the authors of short stories, dictionaries and temporary poems. The term Grub Street is often used collectively to refer to poor and needy authors who wrote for meager sums of money.) This popular culture, which historians believe is created, produced, and consumed by the people themselves themselves, acquired an identity that they had never had before. Furthermore, it was a time of political conflict and patriotism was giving way to intense partisan feelings. Almost all writers could be bought; even the best of them, with a few exceptions, were in the pay or service of one party or the other. Literature has become the servant of politics and state art. It was during this time that writers like Swift and Pope wrote satires against hack writers, a tradition invented by Dryden in his poem "MacFlecknoe" in which he mocked and ridiculed writers he considered worthless (Shadwell, Ogilvy, etc.) and exalted worthy. writers with natural poetic talent (Fletcher, Ben Jonson, etc.). Among these satirical works of Swift, where he attempted to satirize scholastic and modern inconsistency in learning, is his book A Tale of a Tub. It can be seen as embodying, as the "author's apology" states, the author's intention, his satirical objective being to expose corruptions in knowledge and religion. Here Swift, on the surface, claims ...... middle of paper ...... then took up the cause of writing satires with the aim of exposing emptiness, monotony, non- relevance, lack of depth, and low level of the writings of their contemporary writers. Although a tinge of personal spite marks their satirical works, yet one cannot ignore the noble purpose with which these two writers wrote - the aim of maintaining high standards of literary creativity.Bibliography• A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift • An epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot – Alexander Pope• Essay on Criticism – Alexander Pope• Histories of English Literature – Moody and Lovett• Swift's Text, “Text” and “A Tale of a Tub” – Marcus Walsh• Ernest Tuveson (Ed.) – Swift : A collection of critical essays • Miriam K. Starkmann – Swift's satire on learning in A Tale of a Tub