Almost two weeks ago, precisely on 30th November, the Irish writer Jonathan Swift would complete 350 years old, so this post is a tribute to him. He tried to improve politics and a fairer democracy with respect for human rights. This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Swift. The second was published at http://enlightenment-revolution.org/index.php/Swift%2C_Jonathan. The third was published at https://freebooksummary.com/pride-and-arrogance-in-gullivers-travels-41488. The fourth was published http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/downlofunc=downloadFile&recordOId=8926056&fileOId=89260
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was born in Dublin, Ireland. He was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift. His father joined his older brother, Godwin, in the practice of law and he died about seven months before his son was born. His mother returned to England after his birth, leaving him in the care of his Uncle Godwin, a close friend of Sir John Temple whose son later employed Swift as his secretary. he attended Dublin University in 1682, financed by Godwin's son Willoughby. The four year course followed a curriculum largely set in the Middle Ages for the priesthood. The lectures were dominated by Aristotelian logic and philosophy. Swift was studying for his master's degree when political troubles in Ireland surrounding the Glorious Revolution forced him to leave for England in 1688, where his mother helped him get a position as secretary and personal assistant of Sir William Temple. Temple was an English diplomat who arranged the Triple Alliance of 1688. During his visits to England in these years, Swift published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books (1704), and began to gain a reputation as a writer. This led to close, lifelong friendship with Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot, forming the core of the Scriblerus Club (1713). Swift became increasingly active politically in these years. In 1711, Swift published the political pamphlet The Conduct of the Allies, attacking the Whig government for its inability to end the prolonged war with france. Swift was part of the inner circle of the Tory government, and often acted as mediator between Henry St John, the secretary of state for foreign affairs, and Robert Harley prime minister. Swift recorded his experiences and thoughts during this difficult time in a long series of letters to Esther Johnson, collected and published after his death as A Journal to Stella. Once in Ireland, Swift began to turn his pamphleteering skills in support of Irish causes, producing some of his most memorable works: Proposal for Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720), Drapier's Letters (1724), and A Modest Proposal (1729), earning him the status of an Irish patriot. This new role was unwelcome to the government, which made clumsy attempts to silence him. Also during these years, he began writing his masterpiece, Travels into Several Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, better known as Gulliver's Travels. Much of the material reflects his political experiences of the preceding decade. For instance, the episode in which the giant Gulliver puts out the Lilliputian palace fire by urinating on it can be seen as a metaphor for the Tories's illegal peace treaty; having done a good thing in an unfortunate manner. First published in November 1726, it was an immediate hit, with a total of three printings that year. French, German, and Dutch translations appeared in 1727. As with his other writings, this was published under a pseudonym, the fictional Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon and later a sea captain. Though it has often mistakenly thought of as a children's book, it is a great and sophisticated satire of human nature based on Swift's experience of his times. Each of the four books, recounting four voyages to mostly fictional exotic lands, has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride. Critics hail the work as a satiric reflection on the shortcomings of Enlightenment thought.
Jonathan Swift was one of the eighteenth century's great writers. Alert to all manner of phoniness, endowed with remarkable talents for parody, and skeptical of modern trends, Swift was satirist who exposed the moral failings of his age. Though disappointed he received noecclesiastic appointment in England, he emerged as a major figure in English political and literary life. He advised the leaders of the Tory Party, wrote influential political articles in The Examiner and pamphlets, and helped formed the Scriblerous Club, a literary society. Swift published in 1704 A Tale of a Tub, considered his finest satire by many. The book presents an alegory of religious history through the lives of three brothers, Peter. Martin, and Jack, who respectively represent the catholic church, the Church of England, and Non-Conformism. The story of the quarrelsome brothers illuminates the troubled history of organized Christianity. Swift single out Peter and Jack as satiric targets for their tendency to go to extremes of self-glorification and self-abasement. In 1726 Swift published his masterpiece, Gulliver's Travels. Divided into four parts, each recounting one of Gulliver's voyages, the book offers different analytic perspective on England, history, and humanity. Part I narrates Gulliver's shipwreck on Lilliput, a land of tiny people that symbolize contemporary English. The Lilliputians's diminutive stature speaks volumes about Swift's assessment of his contemporaries: like the English, they have an inflated sense of themselves, a morally debased political culture, and a limitless lust for power, all of which makes them contemptible and dangerous. Part IV, in which Gulliver discovers a land inhabited by animal-like humans (Yahoos) and rational horses (Houyhnhyms), deepens Swift's critique of his contemporaries. The savage Yahoo represent what humans can become, but Swift also suggest that Europeans are worse, for they have all the Yahoo vices but have institutionalized and magnified them, (e.g., whereas the Yahoos squabble, Europeans wage wars). The ultra-rational Houyhnhyms seem to represent an ideal, but their passionless lives and readiness to exterminate the noxious Yahoos suggest otherwise. That Gulliver's decision to emulate them leads to profound alienation, from his family and all humanity. At the heart of Swift's major writings, which are unmatched in imaginative ingenuity, lies a profound anxiety over Enlightenment. Swift subject to devastating satiric treatment the central tenets of thought, that man is innately good, that guided by modern science human beings will progress, and that progress depend upon deliverance from old beliefs that do not meet the test of reason. Swift believed such thinking was leading humankind terribly astray and constituted a monstrous act of hubris in which man attempted to usurp God's role.
In Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's adventures and experiences satirize many aspects of human nature. Pride and arrogance are reoccurring themes that make up the most of Swift's satire. Pride and arrogance is shown by the characters in Gulliver's travels. Politics earn Swift's greatest critical disapprobation. Through his supposed characters's observation, Swift levels an indifferent screed against the pettiness of politics and its degrading nature on the human spirit.He does this by focusing on the monarchy and parliaments of the nations he has created. During the voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag, Swift devotes whole passages explicating their political and social customs. These passages serve a satirical purpose by pointing out how petty and ridiculous politics can be. The reader, for who the narrator acts as eyes and ears to the universe he encopunters, is meant to find these social and political customs silly. But there is serious business involved in these passages. Here Swift is satirizing political values and the arrogance with which Europeans regard their form of authority and beliefs.
Gulliver's Travels contain satiric examination of the human condition within fantastic or unnatural settings. Swift became known for his loquacious antiestablishmentarian, in the sense that Swift frequently directed his criticism at the upper echelons of English's authoritarian, class-divided and colonial society. As this study will demonstrate, there are separate breaks in the narrative while simultaneously urging the reader's attention to compare the situation with matters of society. That Swift is criticizing oppression is clear enough. What may not come through without the prerequisite knowledge is that the original criticism was directed at the British colonial rule and its treatment to the Irish population. It is interesting to note that much of Swift's contemporaneous satirical criticism is still applicable to modern society, albeit in a different context.
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