Gulliver’s Travels
Gulliver’s Travels
is a transparent fairy story, a children’s folk tale with a intriguing plot and
interesting events. Gulliver carried off in his box reminds us of Sindbad in the Arabian
Nights and the commonwealth of horses reminds one of Beatrix Potter as well as Animal
Farm.
Scenes in Lilliput served to
infantilize politics, while in the second part of the story Gulliver himself becomes a toy
or piece of kindergarten equipment. However, it is a traditional fairy story of Gulliver
who is caught by one of the reapers in the cornfield, at the start of his Tom Thumb
existence in the land of giants. 
Ever since its appearance, Gulliver’s
Travels has enjoyed both aspects – one of a lighthearted children’s classic
and the other of a morose and misanthropic vision. However some critics feel that the
existence of a truncated children’s version demeans the ‘serious’ meaning
of the work.
The germ of the book went back
to the convivial and collaborative activities of the so-called Scriblerus Club. The book
was written in four parts and probably from about 1720 to about 1725, taking almost six
years to complete. The book caused a sensation. Alexander Pope found that
‘Gulliver’ was the talk of the town. Gay reported, "From the highest to the
lowest it is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery." Though the
book attained a great success, it elicited some puzzled and some skeptical responses.
Among which the famous was from the Irish bishop "The book was full of improbable
lies, and for his part, he hardly believed a word of it."
Other Important
Works
A Tale of A Tub was
published in 1704. His other famous works, The Battle of the Books and The
Mechanical Operation of the Spirit also added to the fame of Swift. A Tale of A Tub
was like a triumph, which ran through 10 editions in Swift’s lifetime. In an Apology
added to the 1710 edition, Swift wrote that he thought that "numerous and gross
corruptions in Religion and Learning might furnish Matter" for satire and further
decided "to proceed in a manner, that should be altogether new, the world having been
already too long nauseated with endless repetitions upon every subject."  |
