Notes: A Tale of a Tub
(Identifying the Jokes)

Section
        Jokes

Title           
        Subtitle

List  
        Pretentious and disorienting language; topics suggesting relevance

Apology     
        Unstable position of speaker. Explanation of the structure (religion and learning); excuse of youth.

Dedication (Somers) 
        Detur Dignissimo.

Bookseller--Reader 
        Parody of excuse for apparently unauthorized printing.

Epistle Dedicatory 
        Posterity hampered by his governor (time) from knowing the works of the modern age, imperfectly commemorated by the present work.

Preface 
        The meaning of the title; plans for a modern academy; the author's study of prefaces; his avoidance of satire (because no-one applies it to himself); future works.

1 (Introduction) 
        The pulpit, the ladder, the stage; the stage stands for works of Grub Street--described. The rivalry of Gresham's and Will's. The presence of wisdom in common stories. The author as hack. Grub-Street titles and dedications.

2 (Tale) 
        The will and inheritance. The brothers' desire to be fashionable. The world as clothes. Peter's suggests for non-literal interpretations of the will.

3 (Digression concerning Critics)
        Critics as rule-givers, as editors, as fault-finders (the modern sense); criticism as a Herculean labor; critics as natural predators, observed by the ancients (a modern discourse).

4 (Tale) 
        The superiority of Peter; his various allegorical discoveries, leading to madness (transubstantiation, celibacy, miracles); the brothers find the will; Peter kicks them out.

5 (A Digression in the Modern Kind)
        Recipe for universal learning; the deficiencies of Homer; the importance of authorial self-praise.

6 (Tale) 
        Martin's careful efforts at removing artifice without destroying the coat is contrasted to Jack's zeal, which tears his coat to rags.

7 (A Digression in Praise of Digressions)
        The value of digressions in filling a book, in the absence of substance, for learning is not infinite. The value of indices to readers (and writers) who do not have to read what they discuss. The usefulness of images, especially sexual. Commonplace books can replace minds.

8 (Tale) 
        The Aeolists hold that wind is the essence of life; hence preaching = belching; inspiration; pulpit as barrel of wind. Aeolist rites. Female priests with better orifices for wind. The devil as windmill.

9 (A Digression concerning the Original, the Use, and Improvement of Madness in a Commonwealth)
        Original: madness is caused by a vapor in the lower regions rising to the brain as instanced by madness in conquest (Henri IV, Louis XIV), in philosophy (reducing the world to a system), and religion. Use: madness assures happiness (the perpetual possession of being well-deceived) by not looking at the true nature of things. Improvement: the various inhabitants of Bedlam should be employed in the capacities that resemble outside. The author himself is mad.

10.(A Further Digression)
        The happiness of authors and readers. The author will continue until his vein is exhausted. Ignorant, superficial, and learned readers. The latter, who spend years writing critical treatises, assure fame. The author has included many secret references.

11. (Tale) 
        Writing like horse-riding at the end and the outset. More adventures of Jack (useful for readers of types): his misuse of the will; inner light; predestination (sample of his discourse); personal characteristics and practices--baptism, courting persecution. Similarities of Jack and Peter. Ears and sex. The author has the reader's curiosity, but has lost the end of his manuscript, which the reader must imagine.

12. Conclusion 
        The problem of knowing when to conclude. The author and bookseller agree to allow the book to be credited to any popular playwright. Profound writers are thought deep because dark. Writing on nothing for the repose of mankind, following invention rather than method and reason. The author writes because nonsense in talk may pass for sense in print.

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