Phiddian explores the distinction between satirical and comic laughter, and the role of satire in licensing public expression of harsh emotions defined in neuroscience as the CAD (contempt, anger, disgust) triad. With a focus on eighteenth-century satirists such as Jonathan Swift, he reveals the importance of satire to free political expression.
Too often, cultural leaders and policy makers want to chase the perfect metric for activities whose real worth lies in our own personal experience. The major problem facing Australian culture today is demonstrating its value - to governments, the business sector, and the public in general. When did culture become a number? When did the books, paintings, poems, plays, songs, films, games, art installations, clothes, and the objects that fill our daily lives become a matter of statistical measurement? When did experience become data? This book intervenes in an important debate about the public value of culture that has become stranded between the hard heads (where the arts are just another industry) and the soft hearts (for whom they are too precious to bear dispassionate analysis). It argues that our concept of value has been distorted and dismembered by political forces and methodological confusions, and this has a dire effect on the way we assess culture. Proceeding via concrete examples, it explores the major tensions in contemporary evaluation strategies, and puts forward practical solutions to the current metric madness. The time is ripe to find a better way to value our culture - by finding a better way to talk about it.
Focusing on parody as a key structural element in Jonathan Swift's prose, this study examines his works, particularly A Tale of a Tub, before 1714. Robert Phiddian analyzes how Swift constructs and deconstructs textual authority, revealing insights into cultural-historical, biographical, and literary contexts. The research highlights the occasions of Swift's parodies, their relationships with quoted texts, and their impact on cultural authority in late-Stuart England. Additionally, it offers a fresh perspective on Swift's early career as a potentially Whiggish intellectual while exploring the intricacies of language and irony.