21 pages 42 minutes read

Jonathan Swift

A Description of a City Shower

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1710

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Themes

Materialism: Sense Experience and Bodily Reality

As noted in the poem’s analysis, “A Description of a City Shower” operates under a materialist, rather than spiritual, worldview. In Swift’s poem, one’s experience of the rain does not rely on one’s spiritual or emotional framework, as it would in a sentimental Classical pastoral, but on the “careful observ[ation]” (Line 1) of events. The signs of the coming rain are presented as mechanical: The cat stops her “frolics” (Line 4), the nose is “offended […] with double stink” (Line 6), and “Old achès throb” (Line 10). Whether it be through sight, smell, or touch, all of these signs are empirically registered. Even “Dulman” (Line 11) at the “coffee-house” (Line 11) “damns the climate” (Line 12) and sees it as having a material influence over his “spleen” (Line 2).

This foregrounding of materiality is perhaps most obvious in the last three lines, which present the “Filths of all hues and odours” (Line 55) as they run through the streets. This catalog, including “dung […] Dead cats and turnip-tops” (Lines 61, 63), suggests that the flow of rainwater has real, material interactions with the waste and refuse of society. Far from inspiring lofty thoughts, imagined tranquil landscapes, and moments of reflection, the rainfall in Swift’s city results in surfacing filth, polluted streets, and people so bombarded with sensory experience that they seek shelter.

Related Titles

By Jonathan Swift

Study Guide

logo

A Tale Of A Tub

Jonathan Swift

A Tale Of A Tub

Jonathan Swift

Study Guide

logo

Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift

Gulliver's Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.

Jonathan Swift