A Study Guide for Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781535824323

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Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift

1726

Introduction

Although in its abridged form Gulliver's Travels (1726) is known as a classic children's adventure story, it is actually a biting work of political and social satire by an Anglican priest, historian, and political commentator. Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift parodied popular travelogues of his day in creating this story of a sea-loving physician's travels to imaginary foreign lands. Structurally, the book is divided into four separate adventures, or travels, which Dr. Lemuel Gulliver undertakes by accident when his vessel is shipwrecked or taken over by pirates. In these fantastic tales, Swift satirizes the political events in England and Ireland in his day, as well as English values and institutions. He ridicules academics, scientists, and Enlightenment thinkers who value rationalism above all else, and finally, he targets the human condition itself.

Like all of Swift's works, Gulliver's Travels was originally published without Swift's name on it because he feared government persecution. His criticisms of people and institutions are often scathing, and some observers believe he was a misanthrope (one who hates mankind). Other critics have suggested that while Swift criticized humans and their vanity and folly, he believed that people are capable of behaving better than they do and hoped his works would convince people to reconsider their behavior. Swift himself claimed he wrote Gulliver's Travels to vex the world rather than divert it. He succeeded in that aim, as the book is considered one of the best examples of satire ever written. Swift's sharp observations about the corruption of people and their institutions still ring true today, almost three hundred years after the book was first published.

Author Biography

Swift was born in 1667 in Ireland of English parents. Swift's father died shortly before he was born, leaving Jonathan, his sister, and their mother dependent on his father's family. Their mother moved to England and left him with a nurse for his first three years. He attended Ireland's best schools, including Trinity College in Dublin, which is where he was in 1689, when civil unrest forced him and other Protestants to flee Ireland for England. In England, Swift began to work as secretary to scholar and former Parliament member Sir William Temple and lived at his home until Temple's death in 1699. Swift was exposed to many new books, ideas, and important and influential people during this time. Ordained as an Anglican (Episcopalian) priest in 1695, Swift wanted a career in the church. Unfortunately, his satirical writings, such as A Tale of a Tub and Battle of the Books (both 1704) offended Queen Anne, who made sure he could not get a decent position. Swift found a job as an Anglican clergyman in Ireland instead.

During this period, Swift met a woman he called Stella, whose real name was Esther Johnson, and wrote his Journal to Stella 1710–1713). No one really knows if the two were just friends or were romantically involved, although rumors persisted that the two had secretly married. At this time Swift also changed his political allegiance from the Whigs, who were more religiously tolerant, to the Tories, whom he felt were more supportive of the Anglican Church. Still, Swift felt that each man should worship God according to his own conscience. His attitude toward the bickering over small