Jonathan Swift1667-1745

Jonathan Swift

• Swift was born in Ireland in 1667• He received a BA from Trinity College, Dublin in

1686• He received an MA from Oxford in 1692• He became an Anglican priest in 1695• He was granted a Dr. of Divinity degree from Trinity

in 1702• He was active in the early debates of the political

parties in England—Whigs and Tories• Swift is famous for his satires:

• A Modest Proposal (1729) • Gulliver’s Travels (1726)

Jonathan SwiftGulliver’s Travels 3. LaputaFour books/voyages: 2. Brobdingnag

1. Lilliput

4. Houyhnhnms

Lemuel Gulliver’s four voyages can be seen as a satirical exploration of the

human condition: What does it mean to be a human being?

The name “Gulliver” may suggest that he is “gullible”

Travel NarrativeGulliver’s Travels is a parody of the genre of “travel narrative”During the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these tales of

voyages of exploration and colonial adventure were extremely popular:

Christopher ColumbusAmerigo Vespucci (for whom “America” is named)Sir Walter RaleighCaptain John Smith

More’s Utopia also parodies the genre. Travel narratives are often sometimes “utopian”—Book IV of Gulliver’s Travels also parodies More’s Utopia

Lilliput

Gulliver encounters a land of tiny people, Lilliput, after being shipwrecked on his first voyage.

They are 1/12th the size of the average human, about 6”

According to Stuart Sherman, editor of the Longman Anthology of British Literature Vol. 1c:

The diminutive citizens of Lilliput represent human small-mindedness and petty ambitions. Filled with self-importance, they Lilliputians arecruel, treacherous, malicious and destructive.

(Longman Anthology, p. 2531)

BrobdingnagGulliver’s second voyage, to Brobdingnag,

a land of giants:

In Brobdingnag Gulliver is reduced to the size of a Lilliputian. 12X the size of man, about 72’

According to Stuart Sherman:

He is humbled by his own helplessness and, finding the huge bodies

of the Brobdingnagians grotesque, he realizes how repulsive the

Lilliputians must have found him (Longman

Anthology, p. 2531)

BrobdingnagWhen Gulliver gives the wise king of Brobdingnag an account of thepolitical affairs of England—which manifest hypocrisy, avarice and

hatred—the enlightened monarch concludes that most of the country’s inhabitants must be “the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the face of the Earth.”

Throughout Gulliver’s Travels that which is admirable is held up to expose corruption in the reader’s world, and that which is deplorable is identified with the institutions and practices of contemporary Europe, particularly Britain. (Longman Anthology, p. 2531)

LAPUTA, BALNIBARBI, LUGGNAGG, GLUBBDUBDRIB, and JAPAN

• The third part deals with mainly with his accidental visit to the flying Island, where the philosophers and projectors devote all their time and energy to the study of some absurd problems.

• He also encounters Struldbruggs, immortals that face the same ailments as everyone else, they just never die

Houyhnhnms and YahoosGulliver’s crew mutinies and puts him

ashore on an unknown island

The island turns out to be inhabited by the “Houyhnhnms”--creatures who look like horses but are more civilized and intelligent than humans, in Gulliver’s view

The island also has “Yahoos”—creatures who look like humans but are sub-human in intelligence, savage and disgusting

• The last part is a most interesting account of his discoveries in the Houyhnhnm land, where horses are endowed with reason and all good and admirable qualities, and are the governing class.

• Contrary to the Houyhnhnms, the Yahoos possess every conceivable evil. They are malicious, spiteful, envious, unclean and greedy. Gulliver admires the life and ways of the horses, as much as he is disgusted with the Yahoos, whose relations remind him of those existing in English society to such a degree that he shudders at the prospect of returning to his native.

Express neither grief nor joy

REASON alone dominates all thinking and decision making

Relationships and courtships have no place

Devaluation of love and all emotion

Nonexistence for rules or laws

Monotonous existence

Rigid Society

Examination of the Houyhnhnm

Greed and envy

Rage and Revenge

Malicious and cruel

Society of without trust

Society without law or order

Devaluation of life and destruction of society

Social Chaos/Anarchy

Examination of the Yahoo

Value the principles of conduct

Charitable and judging

Not fully reasonable

Capable of reason

Existence of hypicrosy

Capable of Reason

Examination of the Pedro de Mendez

Houyhnhnm – what we could be if we relied solely on reason without any regard for emotion or conduct

Yahoo- what we are fully capable of becoming when we let greed, lust, jealousy, rage and revenge dictate.

Captain Mendez- exemplifies what we as a society should aspire to become. Spontaneous, generous and charitable.