Jonathan Swift is the author of the Gulliver’s Travels, which describes fantastic journeys to fictional lands. The novel is filled with caustic satire on the state system, outdated foundations, exposing human stupidity and shortsightedness. Swift’s text is a mixture of genres that reflects the ideas of revolutionism and enlightenment, at the same time being a forerunner of romanticism. Swift manages to ‘vex the world’, since his main idea is criticism of the established order.
World literature is a synthesis of all written by the peoples of the world, earlier this term in a narrow sense referred to the works of Western European authors. Swift is a classic of world literature, having created a revolutionary work in terms of ideology. The author in the text acts as an omniscient force, expressing his ideas with the help of an unreliable narrator named Gulliver (Gong 3). The audience at which Swift’s caustic satire is directed is the entire European public. The historical context of Britain’s aggressive policy forced Swift to highlight the problems of the country’s internal development. Social norms were violated by the author, since the work was provocative, denouncing power and ignorance.
Swift’s main goal is to convey to sophisticated readers the insanity of the world order, associated with political imperfection and illiteracy. The text itself is a parody of popular genres of sea travel, raising doubts about the veracity of the navigators’ descriptions. Gulliver goes full circle from a convinced patriot to a disappointed half-madman, which indicates the imperfections of the world order. Gulliver’s first two travels are a critique of the English political and social order: “our people are…begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, forswearing, flattering, suborning, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, freethinking” (Swift 143). The third journey demonstrates the failure of idealism, the need to call on philosophers to think more practical. The last journey is a satire on society as a whole, where Swift, drawing an analogy with animals, presents all people as unenlightened creatures: “I was an exact Yahoo in every part” (Swift 173). The discovery of the animal and evil parts in human nature makes Gulliver almost insane, which is Swift’s call to the entire reading public to become wiser, accept the madness of the world and try to change it.
The traditions of the Enlightenment required thoughtful reflection on the world order, instead Swift presents a caustic satire, denounced in the form of a fantastic work. The Age of Revolutions offered the world the ideals of courage and despair, while Swift’s hero is doubtful and disappointed. However, Swift’s text is a characteristic text of the era, as it promotes the political freedoms and democratic world order, which are traditional ideas of the Enlightenment (Michie 68). From The Age of Revolutions, the text takes radicalism and the rejection of an unsatisfactory world order. The desire for change directly influenced the text, giving it a critical and accusatory coloring. However, the forerunners of romanticism can also be traced in the text, since the novel is a fantasy, it touches on the theme of travel and adventure, traditional for romanticism. Swift’s text influenced the world and the literary process, changing the idea of satirical works and creating a canonical text of political denunciation, which later became the basis of the dystopian genre.
In conclusion, Swift had as his goal to ‘vex the world’, and make people think about the imperfection of the structure of England and the whole world. He achieves his goal through caustic satire on the political and social order. The message is aimed at the reading public, who have absorbed the desire for knowledge and philosophy as the ideal of the Age of Enlightenment. Swift’s text makes a significant contribution to the development of world culture, being the forerunner of romanticism and providing the ground for the development of a dystopian genre.
Works Cited
Gong, Xuan. “Dual Focalization in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.” Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 51, no. 1, 2021, pp. 1-25, Web.
Michie, Allen. “Gulliver the Houyahoo: Swift, Locke, and the Ethics of Excessive Individualism.” Humans and Other Animals in Eighteenth-Century British Culture. Routledge, 2020, pp. 67-81.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels: Original Text. Amazon Digital Services LLC – KDP Print US, 2020.