Reception of Jonathan Swift in Europe

Jonathan Swift has had a profound impact on almost all the national literatures of Continental Europe. The celebrated author of acknowledged masterpieces like A Tale of a Tub (1704) Gulliver's Travels (1726) and A Modest Proposal (1729) the Dean of St Patrick's Dublin was courted by innumerable translators adaptors and retellers admired and challenged by shoals of critics and creatively imitated by both novelists and playwrights not only in Central Europe (Germany and Switzerland) but also in its northern (Denmark and Sweden) and southern (Italy Spain and Portugal) outposts as well as its eastern (Poland and Russia Hungary Romania and Bulgaria) and Western parts - from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the present day.