Jonathan Swift - GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

QUESTIONS

1. Identify elements of the menippean satire in Gulliver's Travels

• strong comic element;

• the fantastic, crude naturalism and obscenity, adoption of unusual perspective, the use of sharp contrasts;

• the motif of insanity (Gulliver's madness after returning from Houyhnhnmland, the madness of the inhabitants of Lilliput and Laputa);

• utopian/antiutopian motifs in the description of the countries visited by the protagonist (Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, Houyhnmnland);

• concern with current and topical issues (allusions to the political situation in England and Europe, the Royal Academy, etc.);

• philolosophical universalism (the universal theme of human nature);

• predominance of the ideological function (subordination of all elements in the text to the idea of the corrupt human nature);

2. Objects of Swift's satire: human nature, ambitions, desires, dreams, beliefs, social organisation, religion, philosophy, science, morality, ethics, aesthetics, etc.;

3. The uses of irony in Gulliver's Travels (definition of irony: discrepancy between reality and appearance or verbal representation; intentional nonconcurrence of the narrator's and reader's points of view);

4. Swift's view of life in the state of nature:

• nature as an ideal to be followed;

• his treatment of the idea of the noble savage as illustrated by the Yahoos and the horses (Book IV);

• the respective characteristics of the Yahoos and Houyhnhnmns;

• the mode of their presentation by the narrator (selected aspects of description, direct evaluation).

DETAILED QUESTIONS

1. Consider the principal ways of introducing verisimilitude in Gulliver's Travels, including the following devices:

• prefatory matter - direct assurances of truthfulness;

• rejection of the accusations of fictionality;

• 1^st person narration (autobiographical convention);

• circumstantial evidence (names of people and places, dates, minor details);

• references to documents (original manuscript of the book);

• travel narrative convention (geographical details, names of ships, captains, etc).

2. Discuss the objects of satire in Gulliver's Travels:

a) political life;

b) human pride;

c) religious sects, religious wars;

d) discrepancy between ideal (utopian) solutions and their practical results;

e) human beauty;

f) corrupt nature of man;

g) science, progress and human ambitions;

h) ideal language;

i) dreams of eternal life;

j) estranged view of man, human being as animals;

3. Utopian, dystopia and anti-utopian elements in Gulliver's Travels.

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