JONATHAN SWIFT

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was an Anglo-Irish writer, poet and cleric. He was born in Dublin and educated at Kilkenny College and Trinity College, Dublin (Divinity). In 1688 political unrest forced him to leave Ireland for England, where he received a position as personal secretary of Sir William Temple, an important diplomat. In 1692 Swift returned to Ireland to become a priest, but in 1696 he resumed his position at the estate of Sir William Temple until the latter’s death in 1699. He became active in political circles, supporting the cause of the Tories, but a political career was hampered by his outspoken writings. He returned once again to Ireland where he became Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Swift is mainly known for his satirical writings and pamphlets, such as A tale of a tub (1704) and A battle of books (1704). His great masterpiece is Travels into several remote nations of the world, in four parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and a captain of several ships, usually referred to as Gulliver’s travels. It became an instant success at it’s (anonymous) publication in 1726 and was soon translated into French, German and Dutch. The book parodies the travel literature of the period, but especially satirizes political and social circumstances and developments in England, and human nature more generally. It has been interpreted as a sharp critique of Enlightenment thought.

The fragments:

It has been argued that Swift could not have written Gulliver’s travels without having the Thousand and one nights as a source of inspiration. This refers to the idea of the imaginary journey as a mirror to society. Although Swift does not explicitly refer to the Nights in the Gulliver itself, we know that he had read the work. Some passages of Gulliver clearly resemble the well-known cycle of tales ‘Sindbad of the Sea and Sindbad the porter’, which was included in Galland’s translation (1704-1717). The parallels were also observed by the critic Beattie.The work was not only very popular, it also attracted a lot of criticism, because Swift’s descriptions of bizarre societies were seen as caricatures of conditions in Britain. The fragments selected here show the parallels with the cycle of ‘Sindbad’, especially the motif of irresistible desire to travel, shipwreck, encounters with strange creatures, miraculous escapes, the giant bird, etc.

Gulliver’s travels, Penguin Books, London etc. 1985, pp. 53-63, 114-117, 119-129, 180-200, 211-217, 266-273.