A Tale of a Tub — Index stub

TL;DR: 1704 mock-scholarly religious allegory (Peter / Martin / Jack); establishes Swift’s unreliable narrator + apparatus before Gulliver—form parallel, not evidence that Gulliver detail is “only” allegory.

In local corpus: Yes — Select Works vol. I, 1823 (33433076096241/). Page headers: grep A TALE OF A TUB under /home/ari/dev/wget/swift/_extract/The_select_works_of_Jonathan_Swift_containing_the_whole_of/.

Published: 1704 (anonymously). Religious allegory of Peter, Martin, and Jack (Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist branches) and the Digression sections that mock Grub Street, modern learning, and sectarian fashion.

Summary (one paragraph): A narrator ostensibly recounts the will of a father who left coats (religion) to three sons with instructions not to alter them; they innovate anyway while claiming fidelity. The satire targets scholasticism, biblical interpretation as fashion, and church politics. For the Swift investigation, the work establishes Swift’s early pattern: mock-scholarly apparatus and unreliable narrator—the same toolkit readers later bring to Gulliver, without proving every Gulliver detail is only allegory.

Deeper corpus/edition notes: index-swift-select-works-vol1-1823.md | Swift hub