1. feb 17­18.01
1

2. "Swift uses his creative reorganization of daily life to
create the meanest, funniest, dirtiest rant of the entire
eighteenth century – this novel has to be read to be
believed".
feb 17­17.47
2

3. feb 17­17.56
3

4. Swift takes regular topics like politics,
international relations, math and science,
and even old age and twists them. He
makes political differences seem tiny by
sending Gulliver to Lilliput and he makes
math and science seem airy and far from
daily life by floating the island of Laputa
overhead. By depicting human customs we
take for granted as weird and alien,
Gulliver's Travels is asking us to look at
them again as though for the first time.
feb 17­17.59
4

5. Swift went to great pains to present Gulliver's Travels in the genuine,
Reality and standard form of the popular travelogues of the time. Gulliver, the
reader is told, was a seaman, first in the capacity of a ship's surgeon,
imagination then as the captain of several ships. Swift creates a realistic
framework by incorporating nautical jargon, descriptive detail that is
related in a "factual, ship's­log" style, and repeated claims by Gulliver,
in his narrative, "to relate plain matter(s) of fact in the simplest
manner and style." This framework provides a sense of realism and
versimilitude that contrasts sharply with the fantastic nature of the
tales, and establishes the first ironic layer of The Travels. As Tuveson
points out (58), "In Gulliver's Travels there is a constant shuttling
back and forth between real and unreal, normal and absurd...until our
standards of credulity are so relaxed that we are ready to buy a pig in
a poke." The four books of the Travels are also presented in a parallel
way so that voyages 1 and 2 focus on criticism of various aspects of
English society at the time, and man within this society, while
voyages 3 and 4 are more preoccupied with human nature itself,
(Downie, 281). However, all of these elements overlap, and with each
voyage, Gulliver, and thus the reader, is treated not only to differing
but ever deepening views of human nature that climax in Gulliver's
epiphany when he identifies himself with the detestable Yahoos.
feb 17­21.52
5

6. feb 17­19.51
6

7. feb 17­19.47
7

8. feb 17­23.04
8

9. Part 1
Small is mean
feb 17­18.18
9

10. “‘Articles of Impeachment against QUINBUS FLESTRIN, (the
Man­Mountain.)
Article I.
“‘Whereas, by a statute made in the reign of his imperial
majesty Calin Deffar Plune, it is enacted, that, whoever shall
make water within the precincts of the royal palace, shall be
liable to the pains and penalties of high­treason; notwithstanding,
the said Quinbus Flestrin, in open breach of the said law, under
colour of extinguishing the fire kindled in the apartment of his
majesty’s most dear imperial consort, did maliciously,
traitorously, and devilishly, by discharge of his urine, put out the
said fire kindled in the said apartment, lying and being within the
precincts of the said royal palace, against the statute in that case
provided, etc. against the duty, etc.
Article II.
“‘That the said Quinbus Flestrin, having brought the imperial
fleet of Blefuscu into the royal port, and being afterwards
commanded by his imperial majesty to seize all the other ships of
the said empire of Blefuscu, and reduce that empire to a province,
to be governed by a viceroy from hence, and to destroy and put to
death, not only all the Big­endian exiles, but likewise all the
people of that empire who would not immediately forsake the
Big­endian heresy, he, the said Flestrin, like a false traitor against
his most auspicious, serene, imperial majesty, did petition to be
excused from the said service, upon pretence of unwillingness to
force the consciences, or destroy the liberties and lives of an
innocent people.
Article III.
“‘That, whereas certain ambassadors arrived from the Court of
Blefuscu, to sue for peace in his majesty’s court, he, the said
Flestrin, did, like a false traitor, aid, abet, comfort, and divert, the
said ambassadors, although he knew them to be servants to a
prince who was lately an open enemy to his imperial majesty, and
in an open war against his said majesty.
Article IV.
“‘That the said Quinbus Flestrin, contrary to the duty of a faithful
subject, is now preparing to make a voyage to the court and empire of
Blefuscu, for which he has received only verbal license from his imperial
majesty; and, under colour of the said license, does falsely and traitorously
intend to take the said voyage, and thereby to aid, comfort, and abet the
emperor of Blefuscu, so lately an enemy, and in open war with his
imperial majesty aforesaid.’
feb 17­22.52
10

11. "The effect of reducing the scale of life in Lilliput is to strip human affairs of their self­imposed
grandeur. Rank, politics, international war, lose all of their significance. This particicualr idea is
continued in the second voyage, not in the picture of the Brobdingnagians, but in Gulliver himself, who
is now a Lilliputian,"
Eddy, William A. Gulliver's Travels: A Critical Study. New York: Russell & Russell Inc., 1963.
feb 17­19.58
11

12. feb 17­23.05
12

13. Part 2
Big is gross
feb 17­18.19
13

14. Part 2 ­ Chapter 7
To confirm what I have now said, and further to show the miserable
effects of a confined education, I shall here insert a passage, which will
hardly obtain belief. In hopes to ingratiate myself further into his
majesty’s favour, I told him of “an invention, discovered between three
and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder, into a heap of
which, the smallest spark of fire falling, would kindle the whole in a
moment, although it were as big as a mountain, and make it all fly up in
the air together, with a noise and agitation greater than thunder. That a
proper quantity of this powder rammed into a hollow tube of brass or
iron, according to its bigness, would drive a ball of iron or lead, with
such violence and speed, as nothing was able to sustain its force. That
the largest balls thus discharged, would not only destroy whole ranks of
an army at once, but batter the strongest walls to the ground, sink down
ships, with a thousand men in each, to the bottom of the sea, and when
linked together by a chain, would cut through masts and rigging, divide
hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all waste before them. That
we often put this powder into large hollow balls of iron, and discharged
them by an engine into some city we were besieging, which would rip
up the pavements, tear the houses to pieces, burst and throw splinters
on every side, dashing out the brains of all who came near. That I
knew the ingredients very well, which were cheap and common; I
understood the manner of compounding them, and could direct his
workmen how to make those tubes, of a size proportionable to all other
things in his majesty’s kingdom, and the largest need not be above a
hundred feet long; twenty or thirty of which tubes, charged with the
proper quantity of powder and balls, would batter down the walls of the
strongest town in his dominions in a few hours, or destroy the whole
metropolis, if ever it should pretend to dispute his absolute commands.”
This I humbly offered to his majesty, as a small tribute of
acknowledgment, in turn for so many marks that I had received, of his
royal favour and protection.
The king was struck with horror at the description I had given of those
terrible engines, and the proposal I had made. “He was amazed, how
so impotent and grovelling an insect as I” (these were his expressions)
“could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner, as to
appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation which
I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines;
whereof,” he said, “some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have
been the first contriver. As for himself, he protested, that although few
things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature, yet
he would rather lose half his kingdom, than be privy to such a secret;
which he commanded me, as I valued any life, never to mention any
more.”
A strange effect of narrow principles and views! that a prince
possessed of every quality which procures veneration, love, and
esteem; of strong parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endowed
with admirable talents, and almost adored by his subjects, should, from
a nice, unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no
conception, let slip an opportunity put into his hands that would have
made him absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of
his people!
feb 17­22.38
14

15. And where the Lilliputians highlight the pettiness
of human pride and pretensions, the relative size
of the Brobdingnagians, who do exemplify some
positive qualities, also highlights the grossness of
the human form and habits, thus satirizing pride
in the human form and appearance.
feb 17­19.58
15

16. feb 17­23.09
16

17. Part 3
Reason floats
feb 17­18.19
17

18. Part 3 ­ Chapter V
The Author permitted to see the grand academy of Lagado. The academy
largely described. The arts wherein the professors employ themselves.
This academy is not an entire single building, but a continuation of several
houses on both sides of a street, which, growing waste, was purchased and
applied to that use. I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for
many days to the academy. Every room hath in it one or more projectors; and, I
believe, I could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms.
The first man I saw was of a meager aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair
and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin
were all of the same color. He had been eight years upon a project for extracting
sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed
and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers. He told me he did not
doubt in eight years more he should be able to supply the governor's gardens
with sunshine, at a reasonable rate; but he complained that his stock was low,
and entreated me to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity,
especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers. I made him a
small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he
knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them.
I went into another chamber but was ready to hasten back, being almost
overcome with a horrible stink. My conductor pressed me forward, conjuring me
in a whisper to give no offense which would be highly resented, and therefore I
durst not so much as stop my nose. The projector of this cell was the most
ancient student of the academy. His face and beard were of a pale yellow; his
hands and clothes daubed over with filth. When I was presented to him, he gave
me a close embrace (a compliment I could well have excused.) His employment
from his first coming into the academy was an operation to reduce human
excrement to its original food by separating the several parts, removing the
tincture which it receives from the gall, making the odor exhale, and scumming
off the saliva. He had a weekly allowance from the society of a vessel filled with
human ordure, about the bigness of a Bristol barrel.
I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder, who likewise showed me a
treatise he had written concerning the malleability of fire, which he intended to
publish.
There was a most ingenious architect who had contrived a new method for
building houses, by beginning at the roof and working downward to the
foundation, which he justified to me by the like practice of those two prudent
insects, the bee and the spider.
There was a man born blind who had several apprentices in his own condition,
their employment was to mix colors for painters, which their master taught them
to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was, indeed my misfortune to find them,
at that time, not very perfect in their lessons, and the professor himself happened
to be generally mistaken: this artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the
whole fraternity.
feb 17­22.04
18

19. Part 3 ­ Chapter 10
After this preface, he gave me a particular account of the struldbrugs among
them. He said they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old,
after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in
both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession;
for otherwise, there not being above two or three of that species born in an
age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came
to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country,
they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many
more, which arose from the dreadful prospects of never dying. They were
not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but
incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never
descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their
prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems
principally directed are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the
old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all
possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral they lament and
repine that others have gone to a harbor of rest to which they themselves
never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what
they learned and observed in their youth and middle age, and even that is
very imperfect. And, for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to
depend on common traditions than upon their best recollections. The least
miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely
lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they
want many bad qualities which abound in others.
If a struldbrug happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is
dissolved, of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger
of the two comes to be fourscore. For the law thinks it reasonable
indulgence that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to
a perpetual continuance in the world should not have their misery doubled
by the load of a wife.
As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years they are looked on
as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates, only a small
pittance is reserved for their support, and the poor ones are maintained at
the public charge. After that period they are held incapable of any
employment of trust or profit, they cannot purchase lands or take leases,
neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or
criminal, not even for the decision of meres and bounds.
At ninety they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no distinction
of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without relish or appetite.
The diseases they were subject to still continue, without increasing or
diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellation of things, and
the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and
relations. For the same reason they never can amuse themselves with
reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the
beginning of a sentence to the end; and, by this defect, they are deprived of
the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable.
The language of this country being always upon the flux, the struldbrugs of
one age do not understand those of another; neither are they able, after two
hundred years, to hold any conversation (further than by a few general
words) with their neighbors, the mortals; and thus they lie under the
disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own country.
feb 17­22.08
19

20. "In the voyage to Laputa, the actual device of a
floating island that drifts along above the rest of the
world metaphorically represents Swift's point that an
excess of speculative reasoning can also be negative
by cutting one off from the practical realities of life
which, in the end, doesn't serve learning or society.
And in the relation of the activities of the Grand
Academy of Lagado, Swift satirizes the dangers and
wastefulness of pride in human reason uninformed
by common sense".
Downie, J. A. Jonathan Swift: Political Writer. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984.
feb 17­19.59
20

21. feb 17­23.10
21

22. Part 4
Humans are
not humane
feb 17­18.21
22

23. "The final choice of the Houyhnhnms as the
representatives of perfect reason unimpeded by
irrationality or excessive emotion serves a dual
role for Swift's satire. The absurdity of a
domestic animal exhibiting more "humanity" than
humans throws light on the defects of human
nature in the form of the Yahoo, who look and
act like humans stripped of higher reason.
Gulliver and the reader are forced to evaluate
such behavior from a vantage point outside of
man that makes it both shocking and revelatory,
(Tuveson, 62). The pride in human nature as
superior when compared to a "bestial" nature is
satirized sharply. However, the Houyhnhnms are
not an ideal of human nature either. Swift uses
them to show how reason uninformed by love,
compassion, and empathy is also an inadequate
method to deal with the myriad aspects of the
human situation".
Tuveson, Ernest. (Ed.) Swift: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice­Hall, Inc., 1964.
feb 17­20.00
23

24. Part 4 ­ Chapter 10
In the midst of all this happiness, and when I looked upon myself to be
fully settled for life, my master sent for me one morning a little earlier
than his usual hour. I observed by his countenance that he was in
some perplexity, and at a loss how to begin what he had to speak.
After a short silence, he told me, “he did not know how I would take
what he was going to say: that in the last general assembly, when the
affair of the Yahoos was entered upon, the representatives had taken
offence at his keeping a Yahoo (meaning myself) in his family, more
like a Houyhnhnm than a brute animal; that he was known frequently
to converse with me, as if he could receive some advantage or pleasure
in my company; that such a practice was not agreeable to reason or
nature, or a thing ever heard of before among them; the assembly did
therefore exhort him either to employ me like the rest of my species, or
command me to swim back to the place whence I came: that the first
of these expedients was utterly rejected by all the Houyhnhnms who
had ever seen me at his house or their own; for they alleged, that
because I had some rudiments of reason, added to the natural pravity
of those animals, it was to be feared I might be able to seduce them
into the woody and mountainous parts of the country, and bring them
in troops by night to destroy the Houyhnhnms’ cattle, as being
naturally of the ravenous kind, and averse from labour.”
My master added, “that he was daily pressed by the Houyhnhnms of
the neighbourhood to have the assembly’s exhortation executed, which
he could not put off much longer. He doubted it would be impossible
for me to swim to another country; and therefore wished I would
contrive some sort of vehicle, resembling those I had described to him,
that might carry me on the sea; in which work I should have the
assistance of his own servants, as well as those of his neighbours.” He
concluded, “that for his own part, he could have been content to keep
me in his service as long as I lived; because he found I had cured
myself of some bad habits and dispositions, by endeavouring, as far as
my inferior nature was capable, to imitate the Houyhnhnms.”
feb 17­22.47
24

25. Part 4 ­ Chapter 11
As soon as I entered the house, my wife took me in her arms, and
kissed me; at which, having not been used to the touch of that odious
animal for so many years, I fell into a swoon for almost an hour. At
the time I am writing, it is five years since my last return to England.
During the first year, I could not endure my wife or children in my
presence; the very smell of them was intolerable; much less could I
suffer them to eat in the same room. To this hour they dare not
presume to touch my bread, or drink out of the same cup, neither was
I ever able to let one of them take me by the hand. The first money I
laid out was to buy two young stone­horses, which I keep in a good
stable; and next to them, the groom is my greatest favourite, for I feel
my spirits revived by the smell he contracts in the stable. My horses
understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours
every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great
amity with me and friendship to each other.
feb 17­22.50
25

26. I want, by way of an introduction to Gulliver's Travels,
to adopt the approach that Swift is reacting against the
rapidly developing modernity of much of the
seventeenth­century thought—his satire is a cry of
protest in the name of an older tradition, one reaching
back to Socrates, Plato, and St. Paul. And yet, Swift, as a
product of the new forces, is aware that we cannot
simply return to medieval or Greek times and pretend
that Newton never existed.
In short, I want eventually to lead us to the fairly
obvious point that Gulliver's Travels, one of the greatest
works of protest against modernity ever written, is no
exercise in nostalgia but a call to shape the rapidly
growing power of European culture in accordance with
some old insights. His great fear is that, in the eagerness
to follow the direction indicated by Hobbes and
Descartes, among others, which begins with an energetic
and optimistic debunking and rejection of tradition and
the enthronement of new rationality, we may be
throwing out the baby with the bathwater. At the same
time, I will maintain, Swift knows deep down that his
cause is lost. Fuelling the pessimism and the anger of his
satire is, I think, a sense that the moral position he
wishes to defend is already being overrun. Still, he's
going to have his say.
feb 17­23.14
26

27. "For me Swift's language, though strong, is still in control. The vision is harsh,
the anger extreme, but that's a sign of the intense moral indignation Swift feels
at the transformation of life around him in ways that are leading, he thinks, to
moral disaster. The central Christian and Socratic emphasis on virtue is losing
ground to something he sees as a facile illusion—that reason, wealth, money,
power, and faith in progress could somehow carry the load which had been
traditionally placed upon our moral characters.
In the new world, faith, hope, and charity, Swift sees, are going to be
irrelevant, because the rational organization of human experience and the
application of the new reasoning to all aspects of human life are going to tempt
human beings with a rich lure: the promise of happiness. Under the banner of
the new rationality, the traditional notions of virtue will become irrelevant, as
human beings substitute for excellence of character—the development of the
individual human life according to some telos, some spiritual goal—the idea
that properly organized practical rules, structures of authority, rational enquiry
into efficient causes, profitable commercial ventures, and laws will provide the
sure guide, because, after all, human beings are rational creatures.
Book IV of Gulliver's Travels is the most famous and most eloquent protest
against this modern project. The severity of his indignation and anger is, I
think, a symptom of the extent to which he realized the battle was already lost.
To us, however, over two hundred years later, Swift's point is perhaps more
vividly relevant than to many of his contemporaries. After all, we have
witnessed the triumphant unrolling of the scientific project, the extension of
Descartes' rationality into all aspects of our lives.
And yet we might want to ask ourselves whether the cheque which Descartes
wrote out for us is negotiable, whether his promise has, in fact, made us
morally better creatures, more able to live the good life, more charitable to our
neighbours, with a greater faith in the excellences life does make possible,
better able to work out our differences justly, and more able to achieve true
happiness. Or, on the contrary, has giving the enormous power of the new
science to the Yahoos not created some of the those very dangers which Swift
is so concerned to warn us about will happen? The yahoos now posses the
secrets of atomic energy and genetic engineering; their commercial zest is
punching holes in the ozone and deforesting the planet. Meanwhile, in Moscow
and Washington, DC, the life expectancy of adult males is plummeting. Has all
this increase in knowledge and power made us any more just towards each
other? Has it clarified the good life for me and a means of settling justly our
disputes? The jury is, one might argue, still out".
Lecture on Swift's Gulliver's Travels Ian Johnston
feb 17­23.18
27

28. Swift's Moral Satire in Gulliver's Travels
Lecture on Swift's Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels: Perception Vs. Reality
feb 17­19.44
28

29. feb 17­23.51
29