1. Jonathan Swift
1667-1745

2. Jonathan Swift
Swift was born in Ireland in 1667

3. Jonathan Swift
Swift was born in Ireland in 1667
He received a BA from Trinity College, Dublin in 1686

4. Jonathan Swift
Swift was born in Ireland in 1667
He received a BA from Trinity College, Dublin in 1686
He received an MA from Oxford in 1692

5. Jonathan Swift
Swift was born in Ireland in 1667
He received a BA from Trinity College, Dublin in 1686
He received an MA from Oxford in 1692
He became an Anglican priest in 1695

6. Jonathan Swift
Swift was born in Ireland in 1667
He received a BA from Trinity College, Dublin in 1686
He received an MA from Oxford in 1692
He became an Anglican priest in 1695
He was granted a Dr. of Divinity degree from Trinity in 1702

7. Jonathan Swift
Swift was born in Ireland in 1667
He received a BA from Trinity College, Dublin in 1686
He received an MA from Oxford in 1692
He became an Anglican priest in 1695
He was granted a Dr. of Divinity degree from Trinity in 1702
He was active in the early debates of the political parties in England—
Whigs and Tories

8. Jonathan Swift
Swift was born in Ireland in 1667
He received a BA from Trinity College, Dublin in 1686
He received an MA from Oxford in 1692
He became an Anglican priest in 1695
He was granted a Dr. of Divinity degree from Trinity in 1702
He was active in the early debates of the political parties in England—
Whigs and Tories
Swift is famous for his satires:
Tale of a Tub (1704)
A Modest Proposal (1729)
Gulliver’s Travels (1726)

9. Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels
Four “books”—four voyages:
Lilliput
Brobdingnag
Laputa
Houyhnhnms

10. Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels is a parody of the genre of “travel narrative”
During the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these tales of
voyages of exploration and colonial adventure were extremely
popular:
Christopher Columbus
Amerigo Vespucci (for whom “America” is named)
Sir Walter Raleigh
Captain John Smith
More’s Utopia also parodies the genre, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest
invokes the genre
Travel narratives are often sometimes “utopian”—Book IV of Gulliver’s
Travels also parodies More’s Utopia

11. Jonathan Swift
Lemuel Gulliver’s four voyages can be seen as a satirical exploration of
the human condition: What does it mean to be a human being?
The name “Gulliver” may suggest that he is “gullible”
Gulliver’s first voyage, to Lilliput:
Gulliver encounters a land of tiny people. According to Stuart Sherman,
editor of the Longman Anthology of British Literature Vol. 1c:
The diminutive citizens of Lilliput represent human small-mindedness
and petty ambitions. Filled with self-importance, they Lilliputians are
cruel, treacherous, malicious and destructive.
(Longman Anthology, p. 2531)

12. Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s second voyage, to Brobdingnag, a land of giants:
In Brobdingnag Gulliver is reduced to the size of a Lilliputian.
According to Stuart Sherman:
He is humbled by his own helplessness and, finding the huge bodies
of the Brobdingnagians grotesque, he realizes how repulsive the
Lilliputians must have found him. When Gulliver gives the wise king
of Brobdingnag an account of the political affairs of England—which
manifest hypocrisy, avarice and hatred—the enlightened monarch
concludes that most of the country’s inhabitants must be “the most
pernicious race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to
crawl upon the face of the Earth.”
(Longman Anthology, p. 2531)

13. Jonathan Swift
Sherman concludes:
Throughout Gulliver’s Travels that which is admirable is held up to
expose corruption in the reader’s world, and that which is deplorable
is identified with the institutions and practices of contemporary
Europe, particularly Britain.
...
With brilliantly modulated ironic self-awareness, Swift’s painful
comedy of exposure to the truth of human frailty demonstrates that
there is no room for the distortions of human pride in a world where
our practices are so evidently at variance with our principles. Swift
advances no program of social reform, but provokes a new
recognition—literally, a re-thinking—of our own humanity.
(Longman Anthology, p. 2531)

14. Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels : Book IV
Gulliver’s crew mutinies and puts him ashore on an unknown island

15. Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels : Book IV
Gulliver’s crew mutinies and puts him ashore on an unknown island
The island turns out to be inhabited by the “Houyhnhnms”--creatures
who look like horses but are more civilized and intelligent than
humans, in Gulliver’s view

16. Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels : Book IV
Gulliver’s crew mutinies and puts him ashore on an unknown island
The island turns out to be inhabited by the “Houyhnhnms”--creatures
who look like horses but are more civilized and intelligent than
humans, in Gulliver’s view
The island also has “Yahoos”—creatures who look like humans but
are sub-human in intelligence, savage and disgusting

17. Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels : Book IV
Gulliver’s crew mutinies and puts him ashore on an unknown island
The island turns out to be inhabited by the “Houyhnhnms”--creatures
who look like horses but are more civilized and intelligent than
humans, in Gulliver’s view
The island also has “Yahoos”—creatures who look like humans but
are sub-human in intelligence, savage and disgusting