'Almost Normal', or, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Swift But Were Afraid To Ask.

This article seeks to situate Jonathan Swift and his reception in the modern history of sexual norms. Through close attention to several moments across Swift's canon that touch on non‐normative sexuality, and to early intertexts that interpret those moments, including an unsolicited illustration by William Hogarth, I contend that Swift should be recognised – and was recognised by his initial readers – not only for testing the limits of sexual propriety but also for exposing, with characteristically devious subtlety, the contradictory and unpredictably destructive means by which sexual conduct began to be classified and regulated in post‐1688 Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]