# Is there any evidence that a mentally declining Jonathan Swift engaged in coprophagia? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 5, 2017, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-that-a-mentally-declining-jonathan-swift-engaged-in-coprophagia/781461 "2017-03-05T05:46:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-that-a-mentally-declining-jonathan-swift-engaged-in-coprophagia/781461/1 "2017-03-05T05:46:42Z")
Hi Is there any evidence that a mentally declining Jonathan Swift engaged in coprophagia? I had seen this written in articles in the past. I have searched online but could only find references to it in Gulliver’s Travels. I look forward to your feedback. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-that-a-mentally-declining-jonathan-swift-engaged-in-coprophagia/781461/2 "2017-03-05T11:56:43Z")
There are references to coprophagia in _Gulliver’s Travels_? Where? I do not remember any such parts. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-that-a-mentally-declining-jonathan-swift-engaged-in-coprophagia/781461/3 "2017-03-05T12:28:43Z")
There does seem to be a body of opinion which suggest that Swift had an ‘unnatural’ interest in such things, especially after Stella’s death. Here is an essay on the subject that I cannot copy a quote from, but which, in any case, needs to be read in full. > **[0910mycroftswift.pdf](https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/documents/innervate/09-10/0910mycroftswift.pdf)** > > 188.23 KB ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-that-a-mentally-declining-jonathan-swift-engaged-in-coprophagia/781461/4 "2017-03-05T12:33:47Z")
Doubt it. Though lunatics are known for strange tastes ( and he was certainly depressively unsound in his last years — perhaps because of his latent whiggery ). He did include references to excreta in his poetry, but then it _was_ the 18th century. The British, including Victorian commentators — which influence lasted well into the 1930s — are still squeamish about that stuff; even when the American people became as obsessed with scatology as they are now ( British slang tends more to the sexual — something else that was a theme for the Dean ), so it wouldn’t have been taught in Eng. Lit. departments until the 1960s. And he doesn’t strike me as popular a subject as Shakespeare or Ben Jonson in academe since then. Prolly half of British teenagers couldn’t tell you where Swift lived most of his life. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-that-a-mentally-declining-jonathan-swift-engaged-in-coprophagia/781461/5 "2017-03-05T12:51:23Z")
Swift’s fellow Scriblerian Alexander Pope also often indulged in such humor, as in The Dunciad: Cloacina attending Jove as he takes a dump and wipes his arse with the prayers of mortals and the memorable pissing contest between rival booksellers. Both authors were influenced by their love for Rabelais in whose marvelous _Gargantua and Pantagruel_ scatological humor was well to the fore. And indeed it’s an undercurrent, to a greater or lesser extent, in many of the English satirists. (Swift, though born in Ireland, did not consider himself Irish). ---
**Author:** ![igor\_frankensteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/839c29/32.png) [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-that-a-mentally-declining-jonathan-swift-engaged-in-coprophagia/781461/6 "2017-03-05T13:00:15Z")
It’s often the case to consider, that later critics and fans of weirdness in artists, will search out tiny things to blow out of proportion about someone from the past. There’s a whole strain of human nature, that likes to put other people down in order to make themselves feel superior to famous people. or to sell books, or to complete a Master’s Thesis or some such.