Gulliver's Travels

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II. Literary Genre: The Novel

4. How do elements of irony work in the novel?

Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels. (1726, Great Britain)

Key Terms (tags): novel, irony, english literature, eighteenth century

Supporting References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels
2. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gulliver/
3. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/829
4. NYU Medicine, Arts, Lit: http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=12611
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6. Birch, Dinah. "Gulliver's Travels." The Oxford Companion to English Literature. : Oxford University Press, 2009. Oxford Reference. 2009. Date Accessed 30 Aug. 2013 .

“Gulliver's Travels. A satire by Jonathan *Swift, published 1726 as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World ‘By Lemuel Gulliver’. Much cloak‐and‐dagger secrecy surrounded the publication; its textual history is far from straightforward, and the widely varying editions published by Benjamin Motte (1726) and George Faulkner (1735) are difficult to reconcile. The idea of a satire in the form of a travel narrative probably emerged at the meetings of the Scriblerus Club; in the Memoirs of Scriblerus the hero is described as visiting the same countries as Gulliver. In the first part, Gulliver, a surgeon on a merchant ship, relates his shipwreck on the island of Lilliput, the inhabitants of which are 6 inches high, everything on the island being on the scale of an inch to a foot compared with things as we know them. Because of this miniaturization, the pomp of the emperor, the civil feuds of the inhabitants, the war with their neighbours across the channel look ridiculous. By implication, the English political parties and religious denominations are satirized in the implacable feuds between the wearers of high heels and low heels, and in the controversy about whether to break eggs at the big or small end. In the second part Gulliver is accidentally left ashore on Brobdingnag, where the inhabitants are as tall as steeples, and everything else is in proportion. Here the king, after enquiring into the manners, government, and learning of Europe, tells Gulliver that he ‘cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth’.

“The third part (which was written last) is occupied with a visit to the flying island of Laputa, and its neighbouring continent and capital Lagado. Apart from some political animus in relation to England's treatment of Ireland, the satire is here directed against men of science (especially members of the Royal Society), historians, and projectors, with special reference to the South Sea Company, which had generated a speculative economic bubble that had burst in 1720. In Laputa Gulliver finds the wise men so wrapped up in their speculations as to be complete fools in practical affairs. At Lagado he visits the Academy of Projectors, where professors are engaged in extracting sunshine from cucumbers and similar absurd enterprises. In the Island of Sorcerers he is enabled to call up the great men of old, and discovers, from their answers to his questions, the deceptions of history. The Struldbruggs, a race endowed with immortality, so far from finding this a mark of special status, are the most miserable of mankind. In the fourth part Swift describes the country of the Houyhnhnms, or horses endowed with reason; their rational, clean, and simple society is contrasted with the filthiness and brutality of the Yahoos, beasts in human shape whose human vices Gulliver is reluctantly forced to recognize. So alienated is he from his own species that when he finally returns home he recoils from his own family in disgust. Gulliver's Travels was an immediate if scandalous success and was read (according to Alexander *Pope and John *Gay) ‘from the cabinet council to the nursery’. Its use of a supposedly exotic setting to render the ‘normal’ conventions of society eccentric and strange, the radical instability of its central character, and its assault on the emergent form of the novel as represented by Daniel *Defoe have generated enormous amounts of discussion. Conversely, there have always been some readers who found themselves disturbed by the darkness of Swift's vision, particularly in the last book, which William *Thackeray described as ‘furious, raging, obscene’, and which Leslie *Stephen found ‘painful and repulsive’.”

7. Birch, Dinah. "Swift, Jonathan." The Oxford Companion to English Literature. : Oxford University Press, 2009. Oxford Reference. 2009. Date Accessed 16 Aug. 2013 .

The article offers an overview of Swift and less a discussion on the above-cited text.

“Swift, Jonathan (1667–1745) Clergyman and writer, born in Dublin, but predominantly of English ancestry. He was educated, with William *Congreve, at Kilkenny Grammar School, then at Trinity College, Dublin, where he obtained his degree only by ‘special grace’ (he was awarded the degree of doctor of divinity by Trinity in 1702). In 1689 he became secretary to Sir William *Temple. He wrote Pindaric odes, one of which provoked, according to Samuel *Johnson, John *Dryden's remark, ‘Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet.’ In 1695 Swift was ordained in the Church of Ireland. He returned to Temple at Moor Park in 1696, where he edited Temple's correspondence, and in 1697 wrote The *Battle of the Books, which was published in 1704 with A *Tale of a Tub. On the death of Temple in 1699, Swift went again to Ireland, where he was given the living of Laracor. In the course of frequent visits to London he became acquainted with Joseph *Addison, Richard *Steele, and Congreve. He was entrusted in 1707 with a mission to obtain the grant of Queen Anne's Bounty for Ireland, and in 1708 began a series of pamphlets on church questions with his ironical Argument against Abolishing Christianity, followed in the same year by his Letter Concerning the Sacramental Test, an attack on the Irish Presbyterians, and The Sentiments of a Church of England Man with Respect to Religion and Government. He also diverted himself with the series of squibs upon the astrologer John Partridge (1644–1715) known as the ‘Bickerstaff Papers’. His poems of London life, ‘Description of a City Shower’ and ‘Description of the Morning’, appeared in the Tatler (1709).

From 1710 Swift aligned himself with the Tory ministry of Robert *Harley and Viscount *Bolingbroke; he attacked the Whig ministers in The Virtues of Sid Hamet the Magician's Rod (1710), and in the Examiner, and in 1711 promoted the peace under negotiation in The Conduct of the Allies and Some Remarks on the Barrier Treaty. Swift's Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue (1712), one of the few works to bear his name, dates from this moment of political power. The Importance of the Guardian Considered (1713) and The Public Spirit of the Whigs (1714), in reply to Steele's Crisis, were his last major statements of this kind. He was appointed dean of St Patrick's in 1713, Queen Anne having apparently vetoed any high preferment in England. In 1714 he became friendly with like‐minded wits such as Alexander *Pope, John *Arbuthnot, John *Gay, meeting at the short‐lived Scriblerus Club, but in August that year he returned to Ireland. Swift's History of the Four Last Years of the Queen, his ‘official’ account of this period, was not published until 1758, but during his time in London Swift had written the so‐called Journal to Stella, a series of intimate, teasing letters (1710–13) to Esther Johnson, whom he had first encountered at Moor Park, and her companion Rebecca Dingley, who had moved to Ireland in 1700/1, giving a vivid account of Swift's daily life in London in the company of the Tory ministers. This was first published in 1766. Stella was Swift's closest female companion; the Journal mentions his meeting with another woman, Esther Vanhomrigh (pron. ‘Vanummery’; d. 1723), who appears to have pursued him; his relationship with her is playfully portrayed in the poem Cadenus and Vanessa.

Swift now occupied himself with Irish affairs in such pamphlets as A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720). His Drapier's Letters (1724) prevented the introduction of ‘Wood's half‐pence’ into Ireland. He came to England in 1726, visited Pope and Gay, and dined with Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745), to whom he addressed a letter of remonstrance on Irish affairs. He published Gulliver's Travels, with its bitter allegory of Irish dependence, in the same year, and paid a last visit to England in 1727, returning to Ireland in time to witness the death of Stella (28 January 1728). Swift continued to publicize the problems faced by Ireland in A Short View of the State of Ireland (1728) and A *Modest Proposal (1729); he also wrote several ballads on topical subjects for popular distribution. His more important poems include Verses on the Death of Dr Swift (1731; pub. 1739), in which he reviews his life and work with ironic detachment, and the satirical On Poetry, a Rhapsody (1733). Poems such as The Lady's Dressing‐Room, A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed, and Strephon and Chloe, once considered obscene or misogynistic, are now much studied for their refusal to adopt patronizingly ‘polite’ attitudes towards women. His last prose works were the ironic Directions to Servants (written about 1731 and published after his death) and his Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation (1738). Swift kept up his correspondence with Bolingbroke, Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot, and attracted to himself a small circle of friends; the Memoirs of Laetitia *Pilkington contain much material relating to Swift's personality and behaviour at this time. In 1735 the Dublin printer George Faulkner (1699–1755) published the first major collected edition of his work. The symptoms of the illness from which he suffered for most of his life (now thought to have been Menière's disease) became very marked in his last years, and in 1742 he was suspended from his duties. He was buried by the side of Stella, in St Patrick's, Dublin, his own famous epitaph ‘ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit’ (where fierce indignation cannot further tear apart the heart) being inscribed on his tomb. John *Boyle, Samuel Johnson, Lord *Macaulay, and William *Thackeray, among many other writers, were alienated by his ferocity and coarseness, but the 20th century has seen a revival of biographical and critical interest, stressing Swift's verbal inventiveness, restless and sometimes anarchic energy, and satirical courage rather than his alleged misanthropy.

See Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, his Works and the Age (3 vols, 1962–83). The edition of the Prose Works by Herbert Davis (16 vols, 1939–74) will be replaced by the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. C. Rawson and others (15 vols, 2008– ). See also Swift's Complete Poems, ed. P. Rogers (1983); The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. D. Woolley, 4 vols (1999–2007).”