Study Guide to Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Intelligent Education

• Publisher: Influence Publishers
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781645422891
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Manuali di studio
• Subtopic: Guide di studio

A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, an immediate popular success when it was published as Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World in 1726. As a novel of eighteenth century Britain, Gulliver’s Travels was a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre that was popular at the time. Moreover, Swift has given us a book which helps us measure our achievements, our failures and our predicaments against those of another age and another set of values. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Swift’s classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons it has stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work
- Character Summaries
- Plot Guides
- Section and Chapter Overviews
- Test Essay and Study Q&As The Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including
essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

INTRODUCTION TO JONATHAN SWIFT

 

SWIFT AND GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

Jonathan Swift was an old man already when his masterpiece, Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World, was published in 1726. Gulliver’s Travels, as the work came to be called, was an immediate popular success but it brought its author neither profit nor joy, and, at sixty years of age, Swift was not concerned with fame; during his long, difficult and frustrating life, he had already acquired what fame he was to enjoy.

Swift was born in Ireland in 1667; he was educated there and spent much of his early life in that country but, for an extended period from 1708 to 1715, he passed an invigorating and exciting part of his life in England, deeply involved in politics and deeply engaged in some of the most exciting and important developments in the history of England at that period. In those eight years, Swift was recognized as one of the most brilliant men of his age, and certainly, as the most brilliant wit of an age renowned for sparkling minds but, in 1715, (when his party fell from power) there was no longer a place for him in England. He returned to Ireland, bitterly disappointed at the turn of political events and bitterly resigned to what seemed to him a life of obscurity as Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. It was during these years of frustration and despondency, after 1715, that Gulliver’s Travels was conceived and written. When Swift brought the manuscript with him to England, in 1726, he had not traveled outside of Ireland for eleven years. Those eleven years were not empty for Swift; they were filled with an involvement in Irish life that won for him the love of the Irish people but no real success and no joy. When Swift came to England in 1726, it was a renowned and tormented old man whose great work was as written in the bitter experience of what he considered to be his Irish exile.

SWIFT’S LIFE

Swift’s youth was undistinguished. Born into a poor family in 1667, it was arranged that he receive an education but his brilliance was not of the type that distinguishes itself in formal academic studies. He has granted the B.A. as a “special grace” by Trinity College in Dublin. His work itself did not merit the degree. He spent a number of years after his graduation as secretary to a famous nobleman, Sir William Temple. Those were important years in Swift’s life for his connection with Temple brought him into the midst of English and Irish political and intellectual life.

Swift followed the usual course open to young men of poor means and great ability: he sought a career in the Church, the Church of England, and it was through the Church that he became involved in politics. Some early writings of his on contemporary political issues were noticed and his services were sought by influential leaders of the Whig party. He produced for them a number of pamphlets which were, in effect, propaganda for their cause.

In the early eighteenth century in England, religion and politics were closely connected areas of concern. One’s religious position was closely related to one’s political affiliations. Now, in 1708, Swift was sent by his Church to England on a diplomatic mission. He was to negotiate with the government for certain interests of the Irish Church relating to taxes. The issue was rather complicated but it soon became clear to Swift that the Whig ministry then in power was not especially favorable to the interests of the Church in Ireland. Negotiations dragged on with no results and Swift was coming to see that, as a churchman, he had misplaced his political allegiance in his connection with the Whigs. In the meantime, the country was growing disaffected with the Whig ministry and, by 1710, it was clear that the ministry was going to fall. It was at this time that the leader of the Tory faction, Robert Harley, made a number of overtures to Swift, trying to persuade him to lend his services as pamphleteer and propagandist to the Tory cause. When it was clear that Harley’s faction was going to replace the Whigs and when Harley furthermore promised Swift that the Church’s requests would be granted after the Tories took power, Swift broke with the Whigs and joined with Harley whom he served as an adviser and pamphleteer.

The Tories took power in 1710 and the next five years were certainly the high point in Swift’s life. He became one of the most influential figures in the English government. He was, furthermore, deeply committed to the outlook of the Tory party (especially as expressed in its policy toward the Church). Thus, it is easy to imagine that, when the Tories lost power in 1715 at the death of Queen Anne, Swift was deeply disturbed. He regretted, of course, the end of his own political career; and he regretted the necessity for his return to Ireland but, more than this, the Whig triumph in 1715 seemed to Swift to be the triumph of a new and ill considered (perhaps dangerous) philosophy of life.

Swift was to live thirty years longer but these were bitter, frustrated and tragic years. They were years spent in constant and unsuccessful opposition to the policies of a firmly victorious Whig enemy. Swift hated his life in Ireland but he became the first of the great Irish patriots who struggled to save that nation from the economic exploitation and social ruin that seemed to him to be the result of Whig policy in treating Ireland as an English colony.

Though the years after 1715 were years of personal tragedy for Swift, some of his most significant work as a literary artist was done during this period. In 1724, as part of his campaign to prevent the coinage of money in Ireland on terms extremely disadvantageous to the Irish, Swift wrote the brilliant Drapier’s Letters. These were a series of public letters purportedly written by a simple but clear thinking merchant whose aim was to explain to his countrymen the disastrous effect that the coinage proposal would have on the Irish economy. Of course, the drapier was Swift, the clergyman, and the effect of his letters was to kill the proposal; again, in 1729, Swift, now sixty-three years old, wrote the blistering Modest Proposal, the greatest short satirical piece in the English language. Here, Swift put into the mouth of a respectable Whig merchant the chilling proposition that the Irish should fatten their children so that they might serve as food for the tables of the English landlords-and incidentally solve, in this way, the problem of Ireland’s rapidly increasing overpopulation. In this way, Swift called attention to the miserable plight of the Irish and he directed his fire against those responsible for that plight. In 1730, Swift wrote his greatest poem, “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift,” a sophisticated and brilliant treatment of the meaning of a man’s death to his friends who remain alive. This poem is remarkable for its blend of sophisticated humor and tragic irony. Swift’s most fiery, indignant poem, “The Legion Club,” was written in 1736. In this poem, he attacks the Irish House of Commons consistently supporting policies which were disastrous to the church. “The Legion Club” is Swift’s last notable work. Almost seventy when he wrote it, he was to live on for nine more tormented years, half of them in great physical pain and mental decline, all of them with the awareness that his enemies would continue to prevail.

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS AND THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The early 18th century in England is often characterized as a period during which the influence of reason and urbanity was most potent. The preceding century had been marked by civil and religious strife but that strife had passed and men looked forward to a life based upon reason and a nation enjoying peace. The religious fanaticism of the past was seen as a nightmare that did not need to be lived through again. The civil warfare of the seventeenth century was over and men hoped to enjoy the benefits of a stable political system based on the rule of law under the system of constitutional monarchy. Hopes were entertained that men would submit to the clear light of reason and it was thought by many that man was naturally good and capable of living the good life through reason.

Now, Swift shared with his time an abhorrence of the bloodshed and fanaticism of the past but he was less optimistic about the natural goodness of man; furthermore, he was skeptical about man’s ability to guide his own way through the world according to the dictates of his own reason. In fact, Swift’s was the traditional Christian view of man as a weak, depraved creature who lacked within himself the power to forge for himself the good life. If man was to live well, if man was to protect himself from his own weaknesses and make the best use of his own strengths, he needed the help of religion in the form of an established church and he needed the help of an ordered society within which he knew his place. Therefore, Swift’s opposition to the Whigs (for example) stemmed from their antagonism towards the established church, the Church of England. Of course, this was not all, and to say even this much is to make a gross oversimplification. However, Swift’s opposition to the Whigs should be seen as more than the expression of mere political partisanship. We should understand, rather, that he felt that the Whig political position was based upon an essentially mistaken notion of the nature of man, the needs of man, and the proper life for man. Thus, when Swift attacks the Whigs he attacks an attitude towards life which he fears is dangerous.

Gulliver’s Travels is Swift’s great statement in support of the traditional view of man. In this book, we will find an attack leveled against what Swift believed to be mistaken ways of life based upon mistaken views of the nature of man. There will be a great deal of political satire. In Book I especially, Swift will be representing satirically many of the events of the years 1708-1715 when the Whigs and Tories struggled for power. In Book III, he will show what happens when too much faith is placed in the ability of the human intellect and, in Book IV, he will shatter any simple notions of the natural goodness of man.

In many ways, Gulliver’s Travels is a difficult book for us to understand for it challenges many of the basic assumptions of our lives. It challenges science, it disturbs our faith in reason and the natural goodness of man. It is unsympathetic to an economic system based upon finance and technology and, while it extols human freedom, its analysis of the source of that freedom (and the dangers to it) is considerably different from what our analysis would be. That is why Gulliver’s Travels is so important a book for us today. We live in the modern world and are struggling with unprecedented problems. Gulliver’s Travels was written as the modern world was being born and Swift was not happy with what he saw coming to pass. He has, therefore, given us a book which helps us measure our achievements, our failures and our predicaments against those of another age and another set of values.

SWIFT’S OTHER WORKS

Swift was a prolific but not a professional writer. He did not write to earn money. Most of his work was political in nature; pamphlets, propaganda and history and, because of the nature of his writings, almost everything he did had to be published anonymously.

The Drapier’s Letters and A Modest Proposal have been mentioned already. Besides Gulliver’s Travels and these two works, students will be interested in A Tale of a Tub, a brilliant satiric treatment of religious dogmatism and fanaticism. This work was written during Swift’s youth and shows an exuberant and ingenious wit that is often hilarious and always piercing. Another work of his youth, The Battle of the Books, carries the satiric attack against the pedantry and dogmatism of vain learning. Another famous work, the Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, is a brilliantly ironic use of satiric technique to show what it really means to be a Christian and how far indeed men are from living the kind of life they profess to admire.

These are Swift’s major works but his total output is much larger and fills many volumes. Much of his remaining work is very topical but hardly dull. It consists of pieces written for The Examiner, a forerunner of the modern newspaper. There are works on English history of which the most interesting is an account of the Tory ministry Swift was connected with and there are miscellaneous pieces of all kinds, some light and humorous, some bitter and resigned. Perhaps the most fascinating because of its biographical candor is the Journal to Stella, a day by day account of Swift’s experiences in England during the days of the Tory ministry. The Journal is fascinating for the personal glimpses it affords into the relationship between Swift and Esther Johnson who was his closest friend and may have been the woman he loved.

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

INTRODUCTION

 

A LETTER FROM CAPTAIN GULLIVER TO HIS COUSIN SYMPSON

The reader should not make the mistake of skipping over this introductory letter for it is the real beginning of the book. Swift, of course, has made it seem merely a prefatory note (of the kind we are accustomed to ignore) but he has done this to underscore the reader’s conception of Gulliver, rather than Swift, as the true author of the book.

The important thing to recognize in this letter is its chronological relationship to the events of the book proper: the letter is supposedly written on the occasion of the book’s publication. This means that the writer of the letter, Gulliver, has been through the experiences we as readers are about to encounter. The letter is therefore important as an indication of the impact his experiences have had on Gulliver.

What we find, as we read the letter, is that it is the work of a bitter man. We notice his carping criticisms of the publisher whom he accuses of tampering with the manuscript. We notice that Gulliver was reluctant to publish his book and did so against his better judgment; but most striking is the author’s attitude toward the human race. He has the habit of referring to people in the terms usually reserved for animals: he has a tendency to consider himself apart from the human race and he clearly expresses his disillusionment with and his disgust for man. As we read further, we discover that the author of the letter spends a good deal of his time in his stables conversing with his horses! He mentions this as a matter of fact but the careful reader cannot help recognizing that the writer of the letter, though he has sufficient control over his senses to pen his thoughts, is nevertheless at least partially mad!

The reader’s job is now clearly set before him. He must come to the book bearing in mind the fact that the experiences he is to read about have driven the author (the man who lived through those experiences) mad. What then has Gulliver learned about life and mankind that has so affected him? The answer to that question is in the pages to follow: the story of Gulliver’s four voyages to remote nations of the world.

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

BRIEF SUMMARY

BOOK I

Lemuel Gulliver, the son of a Nott...