Jonathan Swift

Gulliver’s Travels

Swift’s Epitaph

Hic depositum est corpus JONATHAN SWIFT S.T.D.

Hujus Ecclesiae Cathedralis Decani Ubi saeva indignatio Ulterius Cor lacerare nequit Abi Viator Et imitare, si poteris Strenuum pro virili Libertatis Vindicatorem Here is laid the Body of Jonathan Swift Doctor of Sacred Theology, Dean of this Cathedral Church where fierce Indignation can no longer injure the Heart Go forth, Voyager, and imitate, if you can, this vigorous Champion of man’s Liberty

irony

• • • first recorded in Plato’s Republic Socrates, assuming the pose of ignorance or foolishness, asks seemingly naive and innocuous questions which gradually undermine his interlocutor’s case and trap him into seeing the truth (Socratic irony) Roman rhetoricians: a rhetorical figure and a manner of discourse in which for the most part the meaning was contrary to the words

• • very difficult to define in all its aspects however, most forms of irony involve the perception or awareness of a discrepancy or incongruity between words and their meaning, or between actions and their results, or between appearance and reality

parody

• imitation of the words, style, attitude, tone and ideas of an author in such a way as to make them ridiculous • Usually achieved by exaggerating certain features, using more or less the same technique as the cartoon caricaturist

sarcasm

• a way of speaking or writing that involves saying the opposite of what you really mean, in order to make an unkind joke or to show that you are annoyed • generally heavier than irony

invective

• a speech or piece of writing which is used to denounce, abuse, criticize sharply, to express dislike, disgust, contempt or even hatred • In Gulliver’s Travels used against the English nobility

defamiliarization

• to ‘defamiliarize’ is to make fresh, new, strange, different what is familiar and known • through it the writer modifies the reader’s habitual perceptions and draws attention to hidden or unusual aspects of reality

enumeratio incongrua

• a list of actions, events, objects, people, all similar except for one or some, which/who stand out for their diversity

I am not the least provoked and the sight of a lawyer, a pickpocket, a colonel, a fool, a lord, a gambler, a politician, a whoremonger, a physician, an evidence, a suborner, an attorney, a traitor, or the like…

scatological associations

• • • • in pathology, ‘scatology’ is a diagnosis by a study of the faeces a term used for literature in which there are references to urin, excrement and bodily functions a way to say that we must come to terms with the realities of our body a powerful means to deflate pride and arrogance

• the Enlightenment culture of eighteenth-century England tended to view humans optimistically as noble souls rather than vulgar bodies; Swift’s emphasis on the common filth of life is a slap in the face of the philosophers of his day. Thus, when Gulliver urinates to put out a fire in Lilliput, or when Brobdingnagian flies defecate on his meals, or when the scientist in Lagado works to transform excrement back into food, we are reminded how very little human reason has to do with everyday existence. Swift suggests that the human condition in general is dirtier and lowlier than we might like to believe it is.

reductio ad absurdum

• • • first appeared in classical Greek philosophy a common form of argument by which one tries to demonstrate that a statement is true by showing that a false, or absurd result follows from its denial or that a statement is false by showing that a false or absurd result follows from its acceptance

language inventiveness

• • • •

to amuse the readers and attract their attention to achieve verisimilitude as a parody of travel literature to signal the ‘otherness’ of those worlds

Gulliver

• • • «gullible» lacks drive, purpose • • often, a mere instrument for conveying information to the reader generally describes without judging but involuntary means of criticism of the situations/people he describes → reactions

undergoes several interesting transformations: from the naïve Englishman to the experienced but still open-minded world traveller of the first two voyages then to the perplexed island-hopper of the third voyage finally to the cynical, disillusioned, and somewhat insane misanthrope of the fourth voyage