Gulliver's Travels [antikvár]

Guiliver's Travels, Swift's classic satirical fable, was first pubUshed in 1726 although he is thought likely to have worked on the book from 1720. The idea of a satire in the form of a travel narrative probably originated from meetings of the Scriblerus Club and Swift would likely have been encouraged by the contemporary interest in voyages. Defoe's great fictional account of Robinson Crusoe's adventures had been published, to great acclaim, in 1719. In the first part of the book, Lemuel Gulliver - a merchant marine surgeon - relates his shipwreck on the island of Lilliput, where, due to the extremely small stature of the inhabitants, their self-important pomp, petty quarrels, wars and dvil feuds, they are made to appear quite absurd. In the second part, Gulliver is accidentally left ashore on Brobdingnag where, in contrast to Lilliput, the impression of absurdity is more direcdy communicated by his being himself in minute proportion to the native giants of that land. As a consequence, he is made to feel his own pettiness. The third part concerns the flying island of Laputa and its neighbouring continent and capital of Lagado, where the satire is directed at contemporary scientists (in particular the Royal Society), absurd enterprises and experts - the book having been written at the time of the South Sea Bubble. The central argument is that science is futile unless it has application to human betterment, a view which may today seem self-evident, but was not so obvious in a less technologically advanced age. The fourth part of the Travels describes the country of the Houyhnhnms, where horses are endowed with reason and virtue, but humans are not. The issue here is that the horses are cognisant of Gulliver's powers of reasoning, in stark contrast to the Yahoos whom he so closely resembles. The Houyhnhnms succeed in demonstrating to Gulliver that human reason is not sufiicient for the conduct of life due to one fatal flaw, the mischievousness of the human mind. It must be remembered that Swift was a priest in Holy Orders and consequently believed in the absolute necessity of divine intervention in human affairs, and the inherently sinful nature of Man. Although not