Travel writing was one of the popular literary genres of the
eighteenth century. The numerous scientific explorations during this period
were motivated by the ambition to venture into unknown territories. In ‘Idler
No.97’, Samuel Johnson had diagnosed a natural curiosity “to learn the
sentiments, manners and condition of the rest” among the people of his age.
In ‘Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In
Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several
Ships’, better known as ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, the Irish writer Jonathan Swift overlays
satire and parody upon the frame of travel-writing as he intends to document
Captain Lemuel Gulliver’s journeys beyond the known world. A letter from
Captain Gulliver to his publisher and cousin, Mr. Sympson and the latter’s
reply in the preface serves to reinforce the illusion of reality portrayed in
the text as well as to detach Swift’s authorial voice from that of his
protagonist. Captain Gulliver claims to publish only at the urge of Mr. Sympson
and asserts that he is no longer interested in reforming his countrymen. Yet the
narrative, in treating several scientific, political and philosophical issues,
clearly is a satire – whose very purpose is ‘reform’.
In order to convey his satire, Jonathan Swift makes Gulliver
take on four adventures.
Gulliver’s first trip takes him to the 'Land of Liliputs',
where he comes in touch with people just six inches in height. The institutions
there seem utopic to him. “There are some laws and customs in this empire very
peculiar”, says Gulliver. But a soon as
Swift turns to describe the politics in the land of the Liliputs, it ceases to
be a utopia. “We labour”, says Gulliver’s informant, “under two mighty evils: a
violent faction at home and the danger of an invasion by a most potent enemy
from abroad.” In the land of the Liliputs, there are two struggling parties,
the Tramecksan and the Slamecksan, distinguished by the heels of their shoes. They
typify the High Church and the Low Church parties, satiric of the Tories and
Whigs of England. The potent enemy of the Liliputs are the inhabitants of the
island of Blefuscu, which typifies France engaged in a struggle with its
neighbour for long. Portraying the
Emperor of the Liliputs, Golbasto Momaren Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue
as an English Whig, Jonathan Swift says that he was “determined to make use of
only Low Heels in the administration of the Government.”
During the time when the second voyage was written, ‘the
Voyage to Brobdingnag’, the country of the Giants, Swift was trying to find a
positive way out of the world of the pygmies, of the contradictions inherent in
aristocratic world. In Brobdingnag , according to Gulliver, “The Learning of
this People is very defective, consisting only in Morality, History, Poetry and
Mathematicks, wherein they must be allowed to excel.” Recounting an incident,
Gulliver says, he was petrified to find beggars thronging the streets and calls
it “the most horrible spectacle that ever an European eye beheld.” No doubt,
the description was inspired from the beggars of Dublin in Ireland which left
an indelible mark on Swift’s psyche, and regarding which Swift had much to say
in his sermons and pamphlets.
In the third voyage, ‘A Voyage to Laputa’, Jonathan Swift
ridicules the philosophers and scientists of his time. The activities in the
Academy of Lagado, which is a caricature of the Royal Society, reminds us of
the doubtful value of much of what passes as science. The flying island, ‘the
King’s Demesn’, in its devious and sensitive oblique movements, presents before
us the relationship between the king and his countrymen in a satirical manner.
Further, the relationship of the greater and lesser magnets, Laputa and
Balnibarbi, suggests the limited usefulness of that understanding of the laws
of the universe upon which the Newtonian era so prided itself. Moreover, in the
portrayal of the Struldbrugs, Swift satirizes the human longing for
immortality.
Part 4 of Gulliver’s Travels contains some of the most
corrosive and offensive satire on mankind. in this part, ‘A Voyage to the
Country of the Houyhnhnms’, the Yahoos are the representative of human
nature. Described as abominable and
despicable, the satire intensifies when Gulliver gives an account of the events
and happenings of his own country to his master Houyhnhnm – about war,
corruption and deadly ambitions. In return, the master Houyhnhnm divulges to
Gulliver the way of life and habits of the Yahoos, their weakness for
glittering stones, their gluttony and weakness for liquor. In contrast, the
houyhnhnms ( the name means ‘Perfection of Nature’) or the horses are excellent
beings whose grand principle is to cultivate reason and be wholly governed by
it. Thus, Swift satirises the entire human race by attributing the houyhnhnms certain
qualities expected from humans, but are actually wanting. The comic function of
the houyhnhnms is to assault pride in men through shock, humiliation, insult,
and most importantly, burlesquian laughter.
Northorp Frye in ‘Anatomy of Criticism’ points out that ‘Gulliver’s
Travels' is written within the conventions of a Menippean satire which includes,
free play of intellectual fancy, digressive narrative and use of dialogue for
the interplay of ideas.
Thus in the guise of a travel-book, Swift used satirical
methods perfected in his earlier literary works to create a masterpiece.
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