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Directions to Servants
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<h2 id="critical-review">Critical review</h2> <p>A 2015 review of <i>Les Editions de Londres</i> suggests that the light-hearted <i>Directions to Servants</i> is more of a <a href="/facts/Horace/8NQn78B9">Horatian</a> than <a href="/facts/Juvenal/wAjQVVyh">Juvenalian</a> satire. Swift goes beyond simple parody or satire: by providing the servants with advice that verges on the absurd he deconstructs and amusingly reveals the absurdities of the Eighteenth-century English social system. But Swift is not concerned with the reform of society, and he does not have <a href="/facts/Beaumarchais/JoTXF6g9">Beaumarchais</a>’s pre-revolutionary stress on the injustice of an aristocratic system. Rather, his intent is to mock and denounce the travails of human nature as did <a href="/facts/Ben_Jonson/I8Horb16">Ben Jonson</a> over a century earlier.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2"><sup>2</sup></a> </p><p>Although the essay is generally little-known in Britain, in France it is (after <i><a href="/facts/Gulliver%E2%80%99s_Travels/G2T65SUH">Gulliver’s Travels</a></i>) one of his most famous works.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3"><sup>3</sup></a> </p> <h2 id="external-links">External links</h2> <ul><li>Directions to Servants at Wikisource</li> <li><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ">Fascimile at Google Books</a></li></ul> <h2 id="references">References</h2> <ol> <li id="fn:1"><p>"Editions de Londres". Retrieved 26 December 2015. <a href="http://www.editionsdelondres.com/Directions-to-servants" target="_blank">http://www.editionsdelondres.com/Directions-to-servants</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:2"><p>"Editions de Londres". Retrieved 26 December 2015. <a href="http://www.editionsdelondres.com/Directions-to-servants" target="_blank">http://www.editionsdelondres.com/Directions-to-servants</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:3"><p>"Editions de Londres". Retrieved 26 December 2015. <a href="http://www.editionsdelondres.com/Directions-to-servants" target="_blank">http://www.editionsdelondres.com/Directions-to-servants</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> </ol>