Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift, was first published in 1726. It is concerned with the English surgeon Lemuel Gulliver and his fantastic journeys around the globe. In four books, Swift tells of Gulliver's adventures among little people, giants, irrational scientists, and a society of horses. Obviously, Gulliver's Travels was written with the intention of creating an entertaining work of fiction. However, Swift's vision in this novel also has a satiric purpose to it. In this regard, the events which occur during Gulliver's adventures take place on a symbolic as well as a literal level. One of the things that Gulliver's Travels is meant to satirize is the genre of "travel literature" which was popular during Swift's time. Examples of this genre include the traveler's tales of William Dampier in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and the novel Robinson Crusoe which was completed by Daniel Defoe in 1719 (Jeffares 24). However, in addition to making fun of the travel literature genre, Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels with the satiric purpose of pointing out the hypocrisies and errors of human life. Thus, the entertaining fantasy of the novel serves as a vehicle for Swift's "bitter criticism of human society" (Kratz 57). Many of the satiric elements in Gulliver's Travels are directed toward the people and institutions of Swift's own time. However, Swift also attacks faults which are inherent in human beings of all times and places. Thus, in addition to criticizing his own contemporaries, Swift used Gulliver's Travels as a means for producing "profound comments on human life in general" (Jeffares 24). As a result of this, Swift's vision in Gulliver's Travels is as meaningful today as it was when the novel was originally written.

In the four different parts which comprise the novel as a whole, Gulliver is forced to take four points of view which are different from the one he is normally accustomed to. I...

Page 1 of 8 Next >

More on Gulliver's Travels...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Gulliver's Travels. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:23, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1705246.html