A Tale of a Tub

By: Jonathan Swift

Narrated by: Peter Wickham

Swift's allegorical satire about religion and politics follows the lives of three brothers, Martin, Peter, and Jack, each of who represents a faction of the Christian faith - Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, and the dissenting faiths, respectively. Each brother inherits a coat (representing religious practice) from their father (God) on the condition that they do not change it. But instead the three quarrelsome youths disobey their father and change their coats beyond recognition. A Tale of a Tub was Swift's first major work and was considered a personal favorite by the author.

Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)2015 Naxos AudioBooks

Where's the satire?

if you are a Latin, philosophy scholar then maybe this work will interest you and you will understand it. I find some literature to be enjoyable and sometimes challenging, but this one went way above and beyond my level of intellect. Swift was indeed a very smart man.

Sometimes drifted into background noise

I tried really hard to pay attention through all of this but the truth is that I had many moments where my eyes started to glaze over (or what's the equivalent for ears?) and A Tale of a Tub just became background noise. Then I'd rewind an try again and the same thing would happen. I don't think that's the narrator's fault. I thought he was pretty good.

But I think my historical knowledge is not comprehensive enough to get all of the satire without significant annotations and an audiobook version doesn't really lend itself to copious footnotes. I have enjoyed Jonathan Swift in the past, but I kept getting lost in this. The "tale" itself was challenging to keep track of (Peter and Martin were obvious enough stand ins for Catholics and Lutherans but I confess I needed google to get who Jack was) and the digressions were even harder. Still a fan of Swift, and I bet audiobooks of Gulliver's Travels are great, but I couldn't make the format plus the content work for me here.