Product Description

Combining travel narrative and powerful satire, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS was an immediate success when it was published in 1726. As soon as Lemuel Gulliver is shipwrecked on the island of Lilliput, Swift's distortion of reality begins and man is seen as a diminished, magnified, abstracted, and finally bestial species. Whether expurgated and adapted for children, or read as a biting and incisive satire on humanity, the novel continues to appeal to readers on a variety of levels.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #895354 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

About the Author
Anglo-Irish poet, satirist and clergyman, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), was born in Dublin to English parents. He embarked on a career as diplomatic secretary and became increasingly involved in politics. He published many satirical works of verse and prose, including 'A Tale of a Tub', 'A Modest Proposal', and 'Gulliver's Travels'. Robert DeMaria, Jr. is Henry Noble MacCracken Professor of English at Vassar College, New York. He has published widely on 17th and 18th century literature.

Customer Reviews

misanthropic? who cares if he can write like this
this book is stunning. I am 28 and only read what i assumed was a diverting childrens yarn from boredom. since then I have read it 3 times and still laugh out loud. Swift satirises the pomposity and mendacity of man so ruthlessly. the voice of the well meaning gulliver is used so adeptly throughout. the last chapter (land of the hounyhoums) was slated in the introduction for misanthropy. I found it brilliant and the funniest part of the book. an excellent read

Witty and wry
On one level, of course this is the story of your childhood. On another it is a sometimes light sometimes vicious always sharp as a razor satire on politics, science, religion, war and many other aspects of the human condition. The writer has a gift for exposing the ridiculous in many of the things we do and displaying it so it appears described but is in fact lampooned.

hidden messages are little too well hidden
Written over 250 years ago: we are told that it is intended as a political satire and an attack on the nastier aspects of human behaviour. This particular version of the book has a considerable amount of letters , comments and criticisms written by various people since it was first published in 1726. This additional material is probably more interesting than the original stories. The significance of what the author intended to achieve by publishing the stories is lost in time and this additional material gives a useful insight into the hidden meanings in the book. It is written in ye olde English with phonetic spelling which makes an interesting contribution to the debate about the need for accurate disciplined spelling. It is hard to believe now that Swift had the book published under an assumed name as a hoax ; presumably to see how long it would take some people to realise that the stories were a practical joke. There are four stories , with Lilliput being the best known; the other three less well known. According to academics, the four stories are the same stories with the same meaning ; they are presented differently, with each story making it's message more blatantly obvious for the benefit of thick people like me. I re-read the first and fourth stories after reading the additional material. I found the Lilliput story boring and the hidden symbolism was too well hidden ; the fourth story about the Hounynhynms is more direct and therefore much easier to understand the author's message. This story contains characters which are half-man , half-ape called Yahoos. According to the additional material , these characters were inspired by a debate among the so-called gentleman scientist of the time about a possible evolutionary link between African negroes, apes and Europeans. The interesting significance of this is that it is happening 100 years before Darwin's `Origin of the Species'. About half way through the fourth story, the author lets loose a tirade of abuse about the immorality of politicians and war , lawyers and the legal/justice system and the knock-out punch comes when the author starts to refer to the human race as Yahoos. If someone were to hand you a copy of the author's criticisms of politics and war , or the lawyers and legal/justice system as printed in the fourth book; you could probably be convinced that the text was copied from one of the present-day newspapers or books. The message I get from reading this type of book is that human society has changed over the span of 250 years , but the tyranny and injustice of our human society remains unchanged. The enthusiasm shown by the British government and legal/justice system towards implementing the Human Rights Legislation and the Big Brother state surveillance shows that 250 years later the author has failed miserably to get his message across.