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Lampooning the Enlightenment

Jonathan Swift was born in Ireland in 1667, at the beginning of what is called the Enlightenment, or the so-called Age of Reason. Because the Enlightenment was essentially a reaction to the bloody religious wars of the previous century, it unapologetically exalted human reason over religious faith; it took on an especially low view of Christianity.
"AS A CHRISTIAN, SWIFT HAD A LOW VIEW OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT."
But as a Christian himself, Swift took a low view of the Enlightenment. And soon after becoming an Anglican clergyman in 1695, Swift began satirizing Enlightenment thinking in withering works of fiction. The most popular: Gulliver’s Travels.
According to Professor Daniel Ritchie of Bethel College of Minnesota, Swift’s satire “was directed against rationalism and the contemporary optimism concerning human perfectibility, which omitted any consideration of human sinfulness.” But those same Enlightenment concepts form the ideological foundation of our own society today. The idea that we humans can perfect ourselves and create a utopia is even more prevalent now than it was in Swift’s day.

The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment, sometimes referred to as the Age of Reason, was a confluence of ideas and activities that took place throughout the eighteenth century in Western Europe, England, and the American colonies. Scientific rationalism, exemplified by the scientific method, was the hallmark of everything related to the Enlightenment. Following close on the heels of the Renaissance, Enlightenment thinkers believed that the advances of science and industry heralded a new age of egalitarianism and progress for humankind. More goods were being produced for less money, people were traveling more, and the chances for the upwardly mobile to actually change their station in life were significantly improving. At the same time, many voices were expressing sharp criticism of some time-honored cultural institutions. The Church, in particular, was singled out as stymieing the forward march of human reason. Many intellectuals of the Enlightenment practiced a variety of Deism, which is a rejection of organized, doctrinal religion in favor of a more personal and spiritual kind of faith. For the first time in recorded Western history, the hegemony of political and religious leaders was weakened to the point that citizens had little to fear in making their opinions known. Criticism was the order of the day, and argumentation was the new mode of conversation.
Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton are frequently mentioned as the progenitors of the Enlightenment. In the later phase of the English Renaissance, Bacon composed philosophical treatises which would form the basis of the modern scientific method. Bacon was also a logician, pointing out the false pathways down which human reason often strays. He was also an early proponent of state funding for scientific inquiry. Whereas Bacon worked in the realm of ideas and language, Isaac Newton was a pure scientist in the modern sense. Like Galileo, he relied on observation and testing to determine the soundness of his theories. He was a firm believer in the importance of data, and had no philosophical qualms regarding the reliability of the senses. Newton’s Principia, completed in 1687, is the foundation of the entire science of physics. This mechanistic view of the universe, a universe governed by a set of unchanging laws, raised the ire of the Church fathers. However, the mode of inquiry which both Bacon and Newton pioneered became much more influential than the Church’s teachings. The Enlightenment would see these ideas applied to every segment of life and society, with huge ramifications for citizens and rulers alike.
The Enlightenment was, at its center, a celebration of ideas – ideas about what the human mind was capable of, and what could be achieved through deliberate action and scientific methodology. Many of the new, enlightened ideas were political in nature. Intellectuals began to consider the possibility that freedom and democracy were the fundamental rights of all people, not gifts bestowed upon them by beneficent monarchs or popes. Egalitarianism was the buzzword of the century, and it meant the promise of fair treatment for all people, regardless of background. Citizens began to see themselves on the same level as their leaders, subject to the same shortcomings and certainly subject to criticism if so deserved. Experimentation with elected, consensual leadership began in earnest. The belief was that the combined rationality of the people would elect the best possible representatives. The idea of a collective, national intelligence led many to imagine that virtually all the world’s serious problems would soon be solved. Discussion and debate were considered healthy outlets for pent-up frustrations, not signs of internal weakness. Argumentation as a style of decision-making grew out of the new scientific method, which invited multiple hypotheses to be put to the test. Empiricism, or the reliance on observable, demonstrable facts, was likewise elevated to the level of public discourse. During the Renaissance, there was certainly unbridled optimism, and a sense of humanity’s great unfulfilled potential. The Enlightenment was believed to be the realization of the tools and strategies necessary to achieve that potential. The Renaissance was the seed, while the Enlightenment was the blossom.
The idea of a “public,” an informed collection of citizens invested in the common good and preservation of the state, reached fruition during the Enlightenment. Curiously, the coffee shop or café became the unofficial center of this new entity. Citizens would gather to read whatever literature was available, to engage in heated conversation with neighbors, or to ponder the affairs of state. What made this kind of revolution in free time possible was an increasingly urban, sophisticated population coupled with the steady progress of industrialization. The coffee houses became the stomping grounds of some of the greatest thinkers of the age. Indeed, democracy would have been unachievable if the citizens had no community forum in which to commiserate, plan, and debate their needs and desires. Grassroots political movements were the natural outgrowth of these populist venues. It must be stated, of course, that this public entity was still a very exclusive one. Women, minorities, and the lower classes were not exactly welcomed into this new civil discourse. For all the high-minded discussion of a new, egalitarian social order, the western world was still predominantly owned by middle class men.
One of the beneficial effects of the Industrial Revolution was a surge in the amount of reading material available to the general public. Consequently, the cost of such material decreased to the point that literature was no longer the sole purview of aristocrats and wealthy merchants. Literacy rates are believed to have risen dramatically during the eighteenth century, as the upwardly mobile citizenry clamored for information, gossip, and entertainment. Some coffee houses and salons appealed to more lowbrow tastes, and these were sometimes the target of authorities. Personal libraries were still expensive, but they were becoming more common. The trend of solitary reading, initiated during the Renaissance, continued unabated throughout the Enlightenment. The first modern lending libraries began to dot the provincial capitals of Europe, with the trend eventually reaching America as well. A literate public was a more opinionated public, and so more equipped to engage in the political discourse. Probably some of the elites looked upon the new reading public with disdain. However, the days of literature as a sacred and guarded realm open only to a few were all but gone by the time the nineteenth century arrived.
In Europe, Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were the torchbearers of Enlightenment literature and philosophy. Rousseau was a strong advocate for social reform of all kinds. He more or less invented the autobiography as it is known today. His most important work, however, was Émile, a massively influential piece of non-fiction that argues for extensive and liberal education as the means for creating good citizens. Rousseau’s work on behalf of social empowerment and democracy would remain influential long after his passing. Espousing similar political positions, Voltaire employed dry wit and sarcasm to entertain his readers while making convincing arguments for reform. Voltaire was in fact the pen name of Francois-Marie Arouet, and there are endless interpretations of the meaning of that name. On the most practical level, a pen name probably helped shield him from the persecution which his writings encouraged. For like Rousseau, Voltaire had harsh criticism for many of the powers-that-were. He reserved especially pointed barbs for the Church, which he reviled as intolerant, backward, and too steeped in dogma to realize that the world was leaving the institution behind. Together, Voltaire and Rousseau are the most well-known of a collective of European writers working to promulgate Enlightenment philosophy, all for the sake of making their world a better and fairer place.
Britain likewise had her share of satirists and humorists attacking the tired and ponderous institutions of the eighteenth century. In the genre of the novel, Jonathan Swift is probably most well-remembered. In all honesty, the Enlightenment was a bit of a dry spell for English literature. Working in the shadow of the Elizabethans presented creative difficulties for English writers, as no one could quite determine how to follow up after Shakespeare and Marlowe. Swift answered the call with a sizzling wit that resonates to this day. Gulliver’s Travels has established itself as a classic of world, not just English, literature. The fantastic story, which in one sense could be seen as mere children’s literature, works on multiple levels at once. Each of the societies that Gulliver encounters has a metaphorical relation to the eighteenth century in England. Whereas some authors confronted social injustice head-on, Swift preferred the inviting trickery of the allegory. His sense of humor charmed his admirers, disarmed his critics, and cemented his reputation in literary history.
Alexander Pope was arguably the only great poet of Enlightenment England. Not surprisingly, he was a controversial figure who invited as much scorn as praise. His biting satires were not modulated with as much humor as Swift or Voltaire, so he drew down the thunder of many powerful figures. From a literary standpoint, Pope was an innovator on several fronts. For one, he popularized the heroic couplet, a sophisticated rhyme scheme that suited his subject matter well. He took mundane settings and events and made them grandiose, a kind of irony that anticipated Modernism by two centuries. He blended formal criticism into his poetry, a diffusion of generic boundaries that also strikes one as an entirely modern practice. In his own day, Pope was possibly most admired for his capable and effective translations of classic literature. He single-handedly elevated translation to an art-form, and demonstrated that a good poetic sensibility was necessary to pull it off with any success. Pope’s great masterpiece was The Dunciad, a four-part, scathing indictment of eighteenth century English society. Although he initially attempted to conceal his authorship, the vitriol of his attacks made it clear that only Alexander Pope could have produced such a piece of literature. Unlike most of his Enlightenment brethren, Pope was singularly pessimistic about the future of civil society. Perhaps he foresaw that the tide of rationalism could sweep out just as easily as it had swept in.
Like many other intellectual movements, the Enlightenment frame of mind transcended the distance between Europe and the American colonies. However, the vastly different political climate of the colonies meant that the Enlightenment was realized in very different ways. Though it may have been transmuted, the essential elements of Enlightenment philosophy had a profound impact on the history of the New World. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine, each in his own way, took up the mantle of rational thinking and encouraged that perspective for an entire society. In America, one could effectively argue that the Enlightenment provided the accelerant for the fires of revolution. For Paine especially, the new ideas from Europe incited in him a desire to see the colonies separate and independent from the British Crown. His Common Sense, an impassioned yet well-reasoned plea for independence, was instrumental in gathering supporters to the cause. The rallying cry of “No Taxation without Representation” was the manifestation of Enlightenment principles of fair governance. Franklin, for his part, was more utilitarian in his approach to matters of public consequence. He saw the need for becoming independent of the British Empire, but he also foresaw the difficulties in forging a strong and lasting union out of disparate and competing colonial interests. His contributions at the Constitutional Conventions were indispensible, and needless to say informed by the principles of rational thinking and the observable facts of the matter.
The essential beliefs and convictions of Enlightenment thinkers were by and large committed to writing, thus a fairly accurate sketch of the eighteenth century mind is available to historians working in this century. The principles set forth during the Enlightenment had consequences in the near term that very few anticipated, and these would spell the end of the so-called Age of Reason. If there is a historical moment that can be said to mark the beginning of the end of the Enlightenment, then that moment was the French Revolution. France in 1789 was an example of a civil society intoxicated with its own power. The belief that the collective power of the public will could shape the future devolved into a kind of ecstatic anarchy. The sadism that French citizens perpetrated on each other was horrifying to the entire western world, and governments took quick measures to curtail the possibility of such violence on their own soil.
As the eighteenth century drew to its inevitable close, the passionate calls for social reform and a utopian, egalitarian society quieted down substantially. If nothing else, people were simply tired. The bloodshed in France and a variety of other upheavals had seemed to demonstrate that Enlightenment principles were not practical, or at least not yet. The atmosphere that permeated early nineteenth century Europe was one of relative tranquility. Granted, there had been substantial gains made in nearly all walks of life thanks to the progressive ideas of the Enlightenment. Science had been propelled forward, such that the traditional authority of the Church was in real jeopardy. Monarchs no longer ruled by Divine Right, and citizens had frank conversations about their nation’s policies and the course of world events. The literary world, too, had to catch its breath. No one yet knew how to deal with a suddenly literate public, clamoring for reading material. The next several decades would be spent figuring that out. Despite its apparent failures and setbacks, the Enlightenment paved the way for the modern world.
This article is copyrighted © 2011 by Jalic Inc. Do not reprint it without permission. Written by Josh Rahn. Josh holds a Masters degree in English Literature from Morehead State University, and a Masters degree in Library Science from the University of Kentucky.
The Enlightenment
By 1714 the success, of British armies against France had made Britain a leading European power. Moreover, Britain had many new colonies. This led to self-confidence. London became far larger than any other town with more than 500.000 people.
A new class of rich aristocrats appeared in London. The power of the monarchy was brought under control.

The Age of Enlightenment was a period in Europe during the 18th century (1688-1789) when the writers wrote that science and the use of reason would help the society to develop. The Age of Enlightenment is often called "The Augustan Age”, because that title was chosen by the literary circles for the admiration of Rome under the Emperor Augustus. The form of polite liter­ature was poetry. At the beginning of the 18th century verse was preferable to prose. By the end of the century prose and verse exchanged their places.
The history of England of the second half of the 17th century and during the 18th century was marked by British colonial expansion. London became a great trad­ing metropolis as well as administrative, political and legal centre of England. Its commercial wealth helped the government become the ruling government all over the British Isles and develop contacts outside Britain. London was the centre of wealth and civilization. The City became the most important district in London; houses were not numbered, because common popula­tion couldn 't read. Instead of the numbers pictures were used. Coffee-houses were very popular at that time. People met there to discuss the latest news, to drink tea or coffee, which became very popular as common drinks. Thus the coffee-houses eventually became cen­tres of political life. Each social group had its own coffee-house. The poets and the literary men attended the coffee-houses to read their creations.
In 1688 the bourgeoisie managed to bring the royal power under the control of Parliament. The compromise was reached between the royal power and the bourgeois middle class in England. This agreement was called "The Glorious Revolution" which was relatively blood­less. It brought the Protestant William III (William of Orange) to the throne in place of his Catholic father-in-law King James II (1685-1688).
King William III and his wife Queen Mary reigned together (1689-1702). He accepted his role as a constitutional monarch.
Meanwhile, in Parliament the lines of the modern party system were already being drawn. The party of landowners was called "Tories", the party of merchants and nobles was called “Whigs". Both parties hated each other, that 's why both words were of negative meaning. "Tory" was the name of certain Irish robbers, "Whigs" was an exclamation of the men driving horses. "Tories" wanted the peaceful domestic policy in England, "Whigs" wanted to force the king to rule through Par­liament.
The Glorious Revolution was the political back­ground of the development of the political literature. Literature met the interests of the bourgeoisie. The writers of the Enlightenment fought for freedom. Most of them wrote political pamphlets, but the best came from the pen of Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift. The greatest essayists were Richard Steele and Joseph Addison. Addison spoke more gently, Steele - a little bit warmly, Alexander Pope — more sharply. But all of them used to flatter the upper-class readers who thought that those essays were written about their neighbours or somebody else. Those writers could cre­ate such an illusion. That illusion was comfortable for the contemporary society.
Periodical newspapers had been published since the Civil War, and in 1702 the first daily newspaper was established. Much of the drama was written not in poetry but in prose. The leading form of literature be­came the novel. The hero of the novel was a represent­ative of the middle class. Earlier the common people were shown only as comical personages. The writers of the Age of Enlightenment wanted to improve the world. But some of them hoped to do this only by teaching. Others openly protested against the social order.
Thus two groups of the Enlighteners could be distin­guished:
I. Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) Joseph Addison (1672-1719) Richard Steele (1672-1729) Alexander Pope (1688-1744) Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)

II. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Henry Fielding (1707-1754) Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) Richard Sheridan (1751-1816)

Daniel Defoe (1661-1731)
Daniel Defoe (Foe, he added "De" 40 years later) called himself fortunate in his education as well as in his family. He was the eldest son of an intelligent London chandler James Foe. His father expected him to become a Minister, but as Defoe later said of his desire to write about economics rather than politics, "trade was the thing I really desired to have taken up with". In 1680 when he was 21 he became a commission merchant, dealing manufacture and acting a jobber for wine, tobacco, woollens and other goods. He travelled a lot and knew several languages. Defoe wrote several comparative notes on manners and cus­toms of different nations in the countries of Europe.
By 1684 Defoe was a well-to-do businessman, and he could marry an attractive young girl of 20 brought up in a rather more important commercial family than his own. Defoe was too energetic. That 's why when his business began to bore him he looked for more thrilling speculations. As a result, in 1692 Defoe was forced into bankruptcy. But he wasn 't upset. He was an optimist. He decided to publish his first real book "An Essay upon Projects" in 1698. He wrote down the suggestions how to improve roads.
Twenty years later in 1719, his masterpiece "Robinson Crusoe” appeared. Then he retired to the comfortable country house that he shared with his wife and two unmarried daughters.
In 1722 Defoe published his novel "The Adventure of Colonel Jack”, in 1724 his well-known book “Roxana” appeared.
Despite his several bankruptcies, Defoe wrote with enthusiasm about trade. In 1726 his "History of the History" was published, in 1727 his "Essay on the History" and in 1728 his "Plan of the English Commerce” appeared.
Defoe died in 1731 in London.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Jonathan Swift was one of the famous English writers of the Age of Enlightenment. Moreover, he was a bitter satirist of the beginning of the 18th century.
In his "Battle of the Books" (1704) he supported the ancients. In the "Tale of a Tub" (1704) he attacked the religious ideas. Swift is known to students of literature as the writer of most bitter and utterly damning satire ever written in England — "A Modest Proposal" (1729). Jonathan is still loved and valued in Ireland as one of the first and greatest of the fighters for Irish freedom.
Swift was born in Dublin. The city 's name comes from Irish dubh lin, the dark pool where the peaty waters of the Liffey flow into the bow of the great horseshoe of Dublin Bay. For 300 years it was the core of the Pale, the area fortified by dyke, bank and palisade, from which the Norman English attempted to rule Ire­land. Later it was the centre from which Tudor, Stuart and Cromwellian governments sought to plant and col­onize the land. In the 17th and 18th centuries Dublin grew to be the second city of the British Isles. Much of the beautiful architecture which its citizens cherish dates from this period.
Although Swift was born in Dublin, his parents were both English connected with several important fami­lies, but themselves possessed little property. His fa­ther was unfortunate; he died at 25 with his son still unborn. Swift was born on 30 November, 1667; six months alter his father 's death. His uncle Godwin Swift undertook to pay for his upbringing and education, but Swift hated his uncle.
Swift was educated at Trinity College with little satisfaction to either himself or the teachers. This is a fragment of Swift s autobiography: "... he (Swift wrote in a third person) too much neglected his academic stud­ies, for some parts of which he had no relish by nature, and turned himself to reading history and poetry,"
Swift was graduated without honours in 1688. In those times Sir William Temple was an important statesman and diplomat in England. In 1688 he had already retired and met with leading writers and politicians at Moon Park. Jonathan Swift became his secretary. This was an interesting position for a young man of 21, because it gave him wonderful chances of meeting the important people of that time. On the other hand, Swift learned much of the dishonesty of successful politicians.
Jonathan Swift remained at Moon Park until he was 32. During his work at Temple 's Swift taught the housekeeper 's daughter Stella who became his inti­mate friend and close companion up to the end. In 1699 Sir Temple died, and Swift had to search for a new job.
He was given the position of chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley who soon gave him a small living, the vicarage of Laracour in Ireland. Swift visited different polit­ical clubs wrote his important pamphlets and got acquainted with famous people.
In 1710 Swift joined the Tory party.
In 1720 he published his powerful pamphlet "A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufac­ture" which proclaimed an economic independence for Ireland. Swift became the hero of Dublin, but the police were searching for the author of the rebellious pamph­let. The police didn 't know who the author was, but the population knew the author quite well.
Jonathan 's masterpiece, "Gulliver 's Travels", ap­peared in 1726. It is divided into four books, but the young people prefer to read only two of them; about Gulliver 's voyages to Lilliput (where the people are six inches high) and Brobdingnag (where the people are giants). The Lilliputians fight wars which seem foolish. The King of Brobdingnag thinks that people are the most terrible creatures on the Earth.
Stella, Swift 's close friend, died in 1728. Swift suf­fered a lot, his mind was breaking. Ten years (1730-1740) he spent in loneliness... In 1742 at the age 74 Swift was declared insane. In 1745 he died and was buried with simplicity. It is interesting to know that he composed the Latin epitaph for himself. He made it in 1735 when he wrote his will. Translated it sounds like this:
Here Lies the Body of Jonathan Swift
Once Dean of the Cathedral
Where Savage Indignation
Can No Longer Tear His Heart
Go, Passerby,
And do, if you can, as he did
A Man 's Part in Defence of Human Freedom.

Swift remains one of the very few who have made satire an effective weapon with which he attacks the enemy.

johnathan Swift presents a much more complex understanding of how lying and honesty fit into human nature.
There is a long heritage to the idea that literature is not only an image but a lie. The ancient Greek poet Hesiod tells us that it is the special gift of the muses to “speak many false things as though they were true.” Plato famously banishes the poets from his ideal city, considering it anathema to true philosophy. Modern philosophy and science have advanced a notion of truth as pure and simple factuality that is opposed to the rich contextuality and ambiguity found in literature. Thomas Hobbes condemns metaphor as illusion, arguing that true statements are constructed of exact definitions and “perspicuous words.” John Locke attacks “all the artificial and figurative application of Words [that] Eloquence hath invented.” The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham claims that “between poetry and truth there is a natural opposition.”
The truth about truth is rather more complicated. Plato’s claim that “there is an old quarrel between philosophy and poetry,” for example, is belied by his use of the literary form of the dialogue, which attests to the more common recognition by the ancients of the power of literature — through images and indeed through lies — to lead us to the truth. Swift would surely not have disagreed that literature holds the power to deceive viciously. Yet he was on to a much more subtle understanding of how we can best find and communicate the truth — an issue whose difficulty is pointed to not only by the subject matter of his satirical masterpiece Gulliver’s Travels (1726) but by its very form as a satire. Satire purports to tear off the falsehoods that paper over our awareness; so why does it take the form of fiction — a lie?
Swift upheld the belief shared by most of the ancients that, properly guided, the lying muses have the power to lead us to the truth. Satire is one very particular form of this lying — ancient in origin but especially prominent in the modern age. More than other literary forms, satire uses carefully crafted lies to convey truths that would be harder to accept or even recognize if presented simply as “fact.” Gulliver’s name may itself reflect this idea: Dr. Johnson’s dictionary tells us that a “gull” is someone who is easily tricked or deceived, yet the “ver” suggests veritas, the Latin word for truth. Gulliver’s journey then, as ours, is one of being deceived into the truth. At its best, satire — like philosophy — is able to make the familiar strange, revealing to us what has been in front of us all along.
In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift challenges the idea — advanced by his Enlightenment contemporaries — that truth, including the truth about human nature, is best understood as a matter of simple factual claims. Swift’s view, as we shall see, was that dedication to this rising scientific view of truth as synonymous with fact precisely misses the very essence of human nature. But Swift’s recognition of the subtle relationship between our capacity for lying and the essential truth about human nature also sets him apart from another modern opponent of the Enlightenment, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche picked up as a kind of motto a mistranslated line from the Second Pythian Ode, a work by the Ancient Greek poet Pindar: “Become what you are.” In Nietzsche’s existentialist understanding (later appropriated in a similar fashion by Martin Heidegger), the phrase is an injunction to drop the delusion of an ideal you, along with any moral overlay it implies, and simply to identify fully with yourself as a bundle of drives. “Become what you are” means for him “Become what you happen to be, not what you think you should be.” That is, amor fati: love your fate!
There is another way to interpret Pindar’s injunction: the essentialist, or classical understanding. This better adheres to a more accurate translation of the poem, which would read something like, “Become such as you are, having learned what that is.” Plato and Aristotle held that we have a telos — an end toward which we are pointed. This end is our true self, and the best life is spent trying to understand what that self is, and to become it. For an essentialist, “Become what you are” means “Become who you truly are, and stop being sidetracked by partial lower drives.”
Although they are in a strict sense opposed to one another, the essentialist and existentialist positions share one crucial insight into the human condition: whatever we are, we are in some sense not what we are. We must choose between identifying with different versions of ourselves; because we act and shape ourselves according to our self-understanding, identifying with the wrong version makes our lives something false, incapable of fulfilling their end. Yet even a correct identification does not accomplish full “genuineness” because we are always in the process of becoming fully ourselves, and thus are always in part “not what we are.”
Since Nietzsche, the choice of which version of ourselves we identify with has been widely understood as a choice between lying and truth-telling — to ourselves as much as to others. The moral ideal has become authenticity — a particular kind of honesty. Of course, just about any philosophical ideal is grounded in some sort of honesty: the search for Truth requires truth. Yet Aristotle describes honesty as a virtue only of self-presentation — the balance between self-deprecation and boastfulness. And Plato never lists honesty as a virtue at all, and even distinguishes between “true lies” and useful or noble lies. From the modern to the post-modern era, honesty and authenticity shifted to become much of the telos of life, where before they had been but means in our progress toward that end.
In Swift’s poem “The Beasts’ Confession” (1738), written several years after Gulliver’s Travels was published, he makes clear that lying, as a human condition, is neither accidental nor escapable. The beasts, speaking as the voice of this poem, do confess their faults, but they defend themselves also, on the basis that what they do is simply who they are. If that weren’t true — if the beasts could be mistaken about who they are, or could deceive themselves — then they would “degenerate into men.” Swift’s essentialist understanding of human nature — what distinguishes it from all other natures — is that we are the creatures who lie to ourselves about who we are.
This is why in Gulliver’s Travels, Swift presents his ostensibly ideal race, the Houyhnhnms, as an entirely different species — a kind of horse that speaks, but is incapable of saying or comprehending “the thing which is not.” But if the distinction between humans and animals is the capacity to lie — which is entailed in the capacity or perhaps necessity of being other than we are — then the Houyhnhnms are the perfection or the fulfilled telos of animal nature, not of human nature. The Houyhnhnms are passionless and perhaps compassionless. They are a projection of the mistaken British empiricist view of what we truly are. The Yahoos, meanwhile, are humanlike in appearance, and a grotesque cartoon of the existentialist understanding of what we truly are — creatures that are a random tumble of irrational drives. The Yahoos and Houyhnhnms are not mirror depictions of humanity short of its capacity to deceive; yet neither the self-less Houyhnhnm nor the selfish Yahoo is a picture of our true nature— not its source, nor its perfected or authentic state. It is far from clear, then, that getting beyond the capacity to commit falsehood perfects human nature.
Houyhnhnm reason is the purely unimaginative, non-speculative, dispassionate grasping of bare facts. When Gulliver tells the Master Horse where he is from and how he got to their land, the horse replies that I must needs be mistaken, or that I said the thing which was not.... He knew it was impossible that there could be a country beyond the sea, or that a parcel of brutes could move a wooden vessel whither they pleased upon water. He was sure no Houyhnhnm alive could make such a vessel, nor would trust Yahoos to manage it.
What the Houyhnhnm cannot easily imagine must be untrue. Their inability to knowingly lie is identical with their inability to see beyond facts — to imagine, to speculate, and even to have opinions. As Gulliver reports, “I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.” Despite their seemingly hard-nosed rational empiricism, there is in fact dogmatism in their rejection of anything beyond what is familiar to them.
The irony is thus that, in their insistence on not saying “things which are not,” the Houyhnhnms do not truly understand what is — and so are after all capable of speaking falsehoods. The Master Horse, for example, claims to know that there could not be a country beyond the sea. And without opinions, they are incapable of genuine and potentially truth-revealing speculation and inquiry. Moreover, not understanding what could be, they cannot even begin to grasp what should be. (Indeed, Swift tells us that the word Houyhnhnm even means “the perfection of nature” — and of course when in a state of perfection, the notion of should has no meaning.) In the Houyhnhnms’ incapacity to see anything as representing, evoking, or pointing to something else, they are enemies of the muses. Houyhnhnms show no concern for a search for Truth; they are a species that simply tells the “truth” — or at least, the facts of the matter. To those who never delude themselves, nothing is ever hidden — and therefore truth is not something that need be sought, but rather something that lies always plainly before us.
A life devoted to Truth as mere fact is repulsive to human beings. This is nowhere as obvious as when the Houyhnhnms look at death: They are incapable of experiencing loss, because they never abstract themselves from the immediate present and immediate facts. They are animals that have perfected their animal nature, living lives of truth as pure factuality. It is of course a common human pretension to strive for just such a thing. Gulliver, in his narrative, claims “to relate plain matter of fact in the simplest manner and style.” This claim, of course, is absurd, made as it is in a story that is wildly satirical fiction, and it is clearly not the view of Swift, the true narrator. The truth he seeks is not one of plain facts, plainly stated, but of something else.
So lies, which Swift takes to be part of our essential nature, are not the target of his satire. The enemy of human authenticity and flourishing is pride, the pinnacle of which is the denial of the lies inherent in our nature. After his sojourn with the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver resigns himself to the idea that he and his species are just a bunch of Yahoos, and writes:
My reconcilement to the Yahoo kind in general might not ... be so difficult, if they would be content with those vices and follies only, which nature has entitled them to.... But when I behold a lump of deformity, and diseases both in body and mind, smitten with pride, it immediately breaks all the measures of my patience.
Gulliver’s disgust with the pride, rather than simply the vices of the Yahoos, brings to mind Swift’s criticism of human hypocrisy in “The Beasts’ Confession”: our defining vice is fooling ourselves about our vices. The ultimate form of this vice — fooling ourselves about our capacity to fool ourselves — is what takes us outside the realm of nature; it is the essence of not being who we are.
A prime source of this delusory pride is the detachment of reason from passion and the apotheosis of mere fact-grabbing as the essential nature of reason itself. In the land of the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos, we see reason and passion precisely separated, housed respectively in these two creatures. In the Houyhnhnms, we see reason without passion, and in the Yahoos, a depiction of our raw nature, absent reason — and that nature is shown as grotesque, suggesting that our reason masks our natural depravity. Yet it is not at all clear whether simply “adding” reason to this nature, if we somehow could, would ameliorate or intensify its odiousness.
When Gulliver’s Houyhnhnm host hears his sympathetic account of the ways of law and war of contemporary Europe, Gulliver reports that he responds, “When a creature pretending to reason, could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself.” Gulliver’s host later adds that he views humans as having been given “some small pittance of reason,” of which we have made “no other use than by its assistance to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones which Nature had not given us.”
Indeed, through most of Gulliver’s Travels, Swift seems to present rationality as enslaved to passion — which might lead us to consider the liberation of reason from passion to be Swift’s ideal. But in his depiction of the Houyhnhnms, we begin to see that rationality detached from life and feeling would make us strangers to ourselves. This point is even more obvious in A Modest Proposal, the famous 1729 tract in which Swift proposes a decidedly novel solution to the problems poverty and unemployment. The satire in that work rests on the trope of treating human affairs as if they were only factual matters — in this case, questions of economics.
The pretense is that moral thought can be reduced to practical calculation. Swift criticizes the moral weakness of mothers who have abortions or commit infanticide, which he describes as a “horrid practice,” while himself posing the more economically sound solution of selling children for food. The joke, of course, is that, in earnestly proposing a solution to monstrosity, the author casually proposes one far greater. It is the reduction of moral thought to nothing more than calculating rationality that is the true source of the writer’s cruelty — and perhaps of the peculiar track record of modernity for the same, in spite of its Enlightenment.
Gulliver’s Travels ends with an illustration of those ills to which detached rationality and truth-telling are prone. Gulliver begins the story as a man typical of his society, subject to its prejudices and cruelties — and to the pride it shows in having a ready, articulated defense for those prejudices and cruelties. The scene in which he explains those mores to the Houyhnhnm is something of a microcosm of the whole story: in defending his own land in the context of another, Gulliver reveals to the reader its absurdities — and begins to realize them himself. When Gulliver returns home, he has become as disgusted by England as were the Houyhnhnms.
It is easy to read this conclusion as a straightforward story of enlightenment or revelation of the false beliefs and horrible cruelties then concealed beneath the edifice of order and civilization so carefully constructed atop European, and especially British, society. And though one perhaps ought not to take too seriously the new Jack Black version, it is notable that it basically adheres to this simple reading: the movie ends with a man who, by learning to tell the truth, magically overcomes the rational illness of our time, ironic alienation, to become an honest man of virtue.
At the end of his travels Gulliver similarly thinks he has progressed from being a ‘gull’ whose thought was polluted by attachments and passions to being an honest rational man. He concludes his story by characterizing himself as someone with “an utter detestation of all falsehood or disguise” and claims that “truth appeared so amiable to me, that I determined upon sacrificing every thing to it.” His journeys transform him from an ordinary person muddling through to an angry, absolutist idealist who will not touch his wife, despises his own family, and seeks only the company of horses.
But the meaning Swift himself intends to convey is both much more and much less radical than Gulliver’s rejection of the imperfectly woven passions and reasons that constitute any real human society. Swift shows us that Gulliver’s self-delusion and cruelty are spurred by his realization of the falsehoods that hide or make palatable the depravities and cruelties to which every culture is prone. His newfound love of passionless truth is the source of his truly cruel treatment of those he should love.
Gauging himself by the unnatural “natural” standard of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver learns to scorn his own nature. He would rather talk to the physical images of purified rationality (domestic horses) than to imperfect but real exemplars of enmeshed and tangled rationality, his family and community. He violates the central principal of Swift and his fellow Tories — that imperfect traditional life has organic wholeness, and all-encompassing rational projects of improvement are often ignorant of the sinews and tendons they tear. Ripping rationality from the human passions, disengaging fact-seeking from imagination, and then using this denuded rationality to disassemble one’s culture and connections is as absurd as deciding that it is better to be a horse.
While the pride of the common human being may be a willful ignorance of our faults, the pride of the rational absolutist is a mixture of self-hatred and pious self-worth. In contrast to either interpretation of “Become what you are,” Gulliver scorns what we happen to be while canonizing and longing for what we are not. His dedication to truth — the bloodless facility of the Houyhnhnms — is his madness. Dedication to the truth of abstracted rationality, and perhaps most of all to the pursuit of seemingly concrete facts that scientific empiricism promotes, tends toward this absolutism. As with many misanthropes, from Molière’s to those who “just keep it real” today, Gulliver’s professed dedication to a narrow sort of truth-telling makes him a liar in his very core.

Lee Perlman is a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he serves as Associate Director of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences for the Concourse Program.
Lee Perlman, "The Truth About Human Nature," The New Atlantis, Number 35, Spring 2012, pp. 142-148.
Satire: Enlightened Wit in the Age of Reason

Mad Magazine, The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live. In our society, satire is among the most prevalent of comedic forms. This was not always true, for before the 18th century, satire was not a fully developed form. Satire, however, rose out of necessity; writers and artists needed a way to ambiguously criticize their governments, their churches, and their aristocrats. By the 18th century, satire was hugely popular. Satire as an art form has its roots in the classics, especially in the Roman Horace 's Satires. Satire as it was originally proposed was a form of literature using sarcasm, irony, and wit, to bring about a change in society, but in the eighteenth century Voltaire, Jonathan Swift and William Hogarth expanded satire to include politics, as well as art. The political climate of the time was one of tension. Any criticism of government would bring harsh punishments, sometimes exile or death. In order to voice opinions without fear of punishment, malcontented writers turned to Satire. Voltaire 's Candide and Swift 's Modest Proposal are two examples of this new genre. By creating a fictional world modeled after the world he hated, Voltaire was able to attack scientists, and theologians with impunity. Jonathan Swift created many fictional worlds in his great work, Gulliver 's Travels, where he constantly drew parallels to the English government.

The new form was not limited to literature alone, William Hogarth expanded Satire to include art as well. His series of paintings, A Rake 's Progress, narrate the life of a young man in eighteenth century London. Hogarth 's paintings also illustrate that anything can be the object of satire, as he made fun of every aspect of life, not simply the institutions of religion, science, and politics. Although not all Satire dealt with religion, science and politics, the most notable satirist of the time, Voltaire confined his writings to these subjects. His style, which has been widely used in our time, is to portray a member of the society he is satirizing as foolish and hypocritical. In one of his more famous works, Candide, Voltaire repeatedly mocks the supposedly all-knowing philosophers with the character of Dr. Pangloss, professor of "metaphysicotheologicocosmolo-nigology" (Lamm 175). Voltaire portrays this man of science as very misguided, not the brilliant thinker one would expect. Evidence of this is seen in the Dr. 's proudest accomplishment, "he proved admirably that there is no effect without a cause (Lamm 175).

Another technique used by Voltaire to convey satire is sarcastic humor. In one description of a common eighteenth century medical cure, the patient is very fortunate to only lose an eye and an ear (Lamm 178). In this case, as well as in many others, sarcasm is used to show Voltaire 's disdain for what he sees as false professors of knowledge. Voltaire occasionally uses slapstick humor as well, not to convey any criticism, but to lighten the mood. An amusing example of this comes in the early pages of Candide, "The Baron 's lady weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, and was therefore a person of great consideration (Lamm 175)"

Jonathan Swift uses satire as a potent weapon to attack governmental injustices and political abuse. In his brilliant essay, A Modest Proposal, Swift projects an expeditious way of addressing Irish poverty by eating Irish babies. In a less trenchant style, Swift attacks English politics and the idiosyncrasies of the people in Gulliver 's Travels

Although it is looked on as his most controversial work, A Modest Proposal was also Swift 's most ingenious essay. The purpose of this essay was to provide a cheap and easy method for making the poor Irish children "sound and useful members of the Commonwealth" (Swift 487-88). He contends that eating Irish babies could solve the problem and save the economy. Swift 's most famous work was with out a doubt Gulliver 's Travels. The Lilliput civilization is paralleled to the English commonwealth, which is cruel and corrupt. The Lilliputian Emperor represents the English monarch who was a tyrant over the people. Also, the work was a weapon against the unfair British courts. In the story, Gulliver is told "that several committees of council have been called lately in the most private manner on your account"(Swift 78). This exemplifies the secrecy and unfairness of the courts, which tried to condemn people without fair trial.

William Hogarth was an innovator by appropriating the use of satire in the world of art. A talented painter and engraver, lively created comical scenes that poked fun of the conventions of the time, including the rich and the poor, doctors and lawyers, drunks and gamblers, and politicians and preachers. In this way, Hogarth brought the French Rococo style and combined it with a distinctively English subject matter to create some of the most well known art and satire of the 18th century. Hogarth 's favorite device was to create a series of narrative scenes that followed the main character or characters through their encounter and submission to any one of various social evils. For example, in his series entitled Marriage à la Mode, the marriage of a young lord, arranged by his parents, begins to founder. In one scene, called "Breakfast Scene," the young husband and wife sit wearily after a long night of partying. The young nobleman, with empty pockets (from gambling), his hat still on, ruffled clothing, and a broken sword is obviously worn out from the last night 's adventures. His dog sniffs at a lace cap hanging suspiciously from his pocket. His servant, carrying unpaid bills, is looking upwards with despair at his master 's slovenly behavior (Janson, 561).

In another famous print, "Gin Lane and Beer Street," Hogarth exaggerates the danger of people switching from beer, considered healthy, to gin, which was looked down upon as a drink for drunkards. The print presents two scenes. The first one, "Gin Lane," shows a town gone to ruins. Garbage is thrown from the windows, a cart of is overflowing with the dead, and men fight in the background. In the foreground, a mother takes some snuff, while ignoring her infant, who is falling off of her lap. Vagrant children wrestle with a dog for the last bit of meat on a discarded bone. In the distance, a cook is preparing a feast of baby, a shocking idea reminiscent of A Modest Proposal. In the "Beer Street" scene, things are much happier. An artist paints a sign in the village square. The pawnbroker 's shop, without its business, has gone to ruins. In front of it, merchants are hard at work, enjoying a thriving economy. In the background, the finishing touches are put on a brand new building. Everyone is working, everyone is healthy, and everyone is happy (William Hogarth 's Realm).

The humor in Hogarth 's works is of the same thread that gives the spreads of Mad Magazine their charm. Crowded scenes, full of detail, have been carefully worked so that the audience may peruse the subjects and setting several times and still not catch all of the details. In this way, Hogarth was able to create what would be called "conversation pieces," for in the same way children can look through a Where 's Waldo for the hidden humor, so could the people of the 18th century look at a Hogarth print and have fun.

At the same time, Hogarth was creating pieces that would, as the classical Horace said in his Satires, "use humor for moral ends." Horace dealt with the same type of subject matter that Voltaire and Swift, notably the vanity of the rich, the corruption of government, and the hypocrisy of religious doctrine. He criticized the foolish behavior of the public as well, illustrating the dangers of immoral behavior. This is evident in The Rake 's Progress, where alcohol abuse and other debauchery lead to a good man 's downfall (Janson, 561). Hogarth is therefore able to use satire to bring about a change, the true quest of a true satirist.

In conclusion, the 18th century could be described as the birthplace of modern satire. For the first time, the educated upper crust was criticizing the establishments, and these criticisms were reaching the lower classes. Three satirists, Swift, Voltaire, and Hogarth, brought about necessary social justice through their wit. In an age of reason, the satirist found and exposed society 's problems, so that they could be laughed at, and so that they could change. Much is owed to the pioneers of satire, who personified the attitude and the dream of the 18th century.

Works Cited:

1. Janson, H.W. The History of Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1972.

2. Lamm, Robert C. The Humanities in Western Culture: A Search for Human Values. New York: McGraw Hill, 1996.

3. Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver 's Travels and Other Writings. New York: Bantam Books, 1962.

4. William Hogarth 's Realm. http://www.opuslingua.com/hogarth/.
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MLA Citation:
"Literature - Satire, Enlightened Wit in the Age of Reason." 123HelpMe.com. 21 Feb 2014 Criticism
William A. Eddy (essay date 1923)
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SOURCE: "Didactic Content of the 'Philosophic Voyage, '" in Gulliver 's Travels: A Critical Study, Russell & Russell, 1963, pp. 40-50.
[In the essay below, first published in 1923 and reprinted in 1963, Eddy focuses on Swift 's satiric, pessimistic, and misanthropic views in arguing the superiority of Gulliver 's Travels over other contemporaneous texts employing the "voyage" motif]
Turning now from the story form of the Philosophic Voyage and from its interest as a romantic tale, let us examine the author 's purpose in writing. In its fully developed form the Philosophic Voyage was always a vehicle for ideas, never an end in itself. Swift 's avowed...
(The entire section is 4647 words.)
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Arthur E. Case (essay date 1945)
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SOURCE: "The Geography and Chronology of Gulliver 's Travels," in Four Essays on "Gulliver 's Travels, " Peter Smith, 1958, pp. 50-67.
[In the following essay, first published in 1945 and reprinted in 1958, Case argues that many of the geographical and chronological inconsistencies in Gulliver 's Travels are not due to Swift 's carelessness, but instead are attributable to engraving and printing errors that remained uncorrected in later editions.]
Surprisingly little attention has been paid by editors and commentators to the geography and chronology of Gulliver 's Travels. Sir Henry Craik, in his Selections from Swift, found the geography worth a...
(The entire section is 7154 words.)
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Roland M. Frye (essay date 1954)
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SOURCE: "Swift 's Yahoo and the Christian Symbols for Sin," in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XV, No. 2, April, 1954, pp. 201-17.
[Below, Frye discusses ways that Swift 's characterization of the Yahoos reflects eighteenth-century Protestant dogma equating the misuse and abuse of reason with sin.]
I
Swift 's treatment of the Yahoo in the fourth book of Gulliver 's Travels has been the center of a prolonged critical controversy. Involving and epitomizing as it does the so-called "misanthropy" of Swift, this controversy has a significance which extends beyond the particular work in question, although that is significant enough in...
(The entire section is 7468 words.)
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David Oakleaf (essay date 1983-84)
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SOURCE: "Trompe l 'Oeil ': Gulliver and the Distortions of the Observing Eye," in University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 2, Winter 1983/84, pp. 166-80.
[In the following essay, Oakleaf examines how advancements in the capabilities of visual instruments in the eighteenth century destabilized notions of authoritative fixed points of view, causing philosophers, artists, and writers to reevaluate notions of one 's ability to observe as well as the inherent bias of personal perspective.]
Lemuel Gulliver, the narrator of Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, is obviously an observer. The very title of his narrative appeals to popular interest in...
(The entire section is 6819 words.)
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Michael McKeon (essay date 1987)
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SOURCE: "The Parables of the Younger Son (II): Swift and the Containment of Desire," in The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987, pp. 338-56.
[In the following essay, McKeon discusses how Gulliver reveals Swift 's pessimism concerning one 's ability to transcend his or her political and social status because of predetermining cultural forces and inescapable material realities.]
1
For a brief time fellow servants of the Tory ministry, [Daniel] Defoe and Swift were never on close, or even cordial, terms. The cultural gulf between the two men, evident enough in their educational and religious differences,...
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J. A. Downie (essay date 1989)
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SOURCE: "The Political Significance of Gulliver 's Travels," in Swift and His Contexts, edited by John Irwin Fischer, Herman J. Real and James Woolley, AMS Press, 1989, pp. 1-20.
[In the following essay, Downie argues that critics have gone too far in making links between real events and people in British history and the contents of Gulliver 's Travels. He suggests that Swift was writing a more general "parallel history" rather than a decipherable allegorical text intended to serve as an exposé.]
Seventy years have passed since Sir Charles Firth first made use of the title I have chosen for my essay. "Political allusions abound in the Travels,"...
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J. Paul Hunter (essay date 1990)
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SOURCE: "Gulliver 's Travels and the Novel," in The Genres of "Gulliver 's Travels," edited by Frederik N. Smith, University of Delaware Press, 1990, pp. 56-74.
[In the following essay, Hunter discusses the significance of Gulliver 's Travels as a cutting-edge transitional text that uses satire to parody the subjective, first-person narrative, thus anticipating the rise of the novel as a narrative form.]
Gulliver 's Travels is not a novel in any meaningful sense of that slippery term that I know, yet its generic status would be difficult to establish without having the novel in mind. Swift 's masterpiece is, in fact, so conceptually dependent upon the...
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Christopher Fox (essay date 1992)
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SOURCE: "The Myth of Narcissus in Swift 's Travels," in Reader Entrapment in Eighteenth-Century Literature, edited by Carl R. Kropf, AMS Press, 1992, pp. 89-108.
[In the following essay, Fox studies Swift 's employment of the masturbation motif, (i.e. Gulliver 's apprenticeship to "my good Master Bates") as a metaphor for excessive, myopic self-involvement, and as a retelling of the myth of Narcissus.]
This essay begins with a question posed by the late Frank Brady in 1978 and (more recently) by William Kinsley in 1982. What do we make of Gulliver 's apprenticeship, at the opening of the Travels, to "my good Master Bates"? Brady noted that it "is easy to...
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Margaret Anne Doody (essay date 1995)
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SOURCE: "Swift and Romance," in Walking Naboth 's Vineyard: New Studies of Swift, edited by Christopher Fox and Brenda Tooley, University of Notre Dame Press, 1995, pp. 98-126.
[Below, Doody argues that Swift 's Gulliver 's Travels, like all significant Western texts, builds on and is connected to the entire Western literary canon.]
My topic may seem perverse. After all, in Gulliver 's Travels, as we remember, the palace at Lilliput is set on fire "by the Carelessness of a Maid of Honour, who fell asleep while she was reading a Romance."1 We may take this, if we will, as a symptom of Swift 's own distrust of novelistic narrative of all kinds; the...
(The entire section is 10150 words.)
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Denis Donoghue (essay date 1996)
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SOURCE: "The Brainwashing of Lemuel Gulliver," in The Southern Review, Vol. 32, No. 1, Winter, 1996, pp. 128-46.
[Below, Donoghue discusses ways in which Swift challenged Enlightenment thought and mocked Locke 's "tabula rasa" conception of human consciousness, and instead viewed men as destined to be "brainwashed" by ineluctable cultural, political, and social forces.]
On October 28, 1726, the London printer Benjamin Motte issued the first volume of Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver, "first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships." A few readers knew that the real author was Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick 's...
(The entire section is 8370 words.)

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Satire in 18th Century British Society: Alexander Pope 's The Rape of the Lock and Jonathan Swift 's A Modest Proposal

By Jonathan J. Szwec
2011, Vol. 3 No. 06 | pg. 1/1
17

The 18th century was one in which exaltation of wit and reason came to the forefront of literature in the form of both Horatian and Juvenalian satires, which, through keen observation and sharp nimbleness of thought, exposed the superficial follies and moral corruption of society during the neoclassical period in Britain. Underneath the enlightenment ideals of rationality, order and knowledge, society embraced a pervasive obsession with “decorum,” a façade of established traditions and vanities, as well as an innate sense of moral and political supremacy. Satires during this period aimed to point out the shortcomings of society through ridiculing accepted standards of thought, exposing Britain’s flaws and chastising the hypocrisy of the time. Enlightenment writers Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift used different mediums of satire, different types of logic, and different targets of ridicule in order to shine a light on separate aspects of British society, providing much-needed criticism of the profuse moral corruption of a society that sometimes seemed to forget the true ideals of its age.
Pope and Swift, well known for their sharply perceptive works, both looked to rhetorical masters of the rational, classical past and their separate satirical archetypes for inspiration. Pope, in his The Rape of the Lock, is Horatian in tone, delicately chiding society in a sly but polished voice by holding up a mirror to the follies and vanities of the upper class. Pope does not actively attack the self-important pomp of the British aristocracy, but rather presents it in such a way that gives the reader a new perspective from which to easily view the actions in the story as foolish and ridiculous. A gentle mockery of the upper class, more delicate and lyrical than his brutal counterpart, Pope nonetheless is able to effectively illuminate the moral degradation of society to the public. Swift’s A Modest Proposal, however, is a quintessential Juvenalian satire, shockingly revealing an often-overlooked dimension of British colonialism with regards to the Irish through savage ridicule and disdainful contempt. A bitter attack, Swift’s morbid tale delineates an immoral and perverse solution to Ireland’s economical woes using bizarre yet brilliantly clear logic and a detached tone in order to attack indifference to the poor. Swift’s satirical tone, relying on realism and harshness to carry its message, is much more acerbic than his counterpart, perfectly displaying Juvenalian satire’s ability to shock and ridicule.
The Rape of the Lock assimilates the masterful qualities of a heroic epic, yet is applied satirically to a seemingly petty egotistical elitist quarrel. During this time of literary prosper, epic poems such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost were held in high regard, due to their significant subject matter, compelling heroes, and rich text. Pope follows this grand form in The Rape of the Lock, ultimately achieving a whimsical mock epic through his mélange of the trifling and timeless. Despite the likeness to historical epic pieces, this work displays a light and playful tone, which illuminates the idiosyncratic nature of the poem’s central conflict, the Baron stealing, or “raping”, Belinda’s illustrious lock of hair. “The meeting points the sacred hair dissever from the fair head, forever and forever! Then flashed the living lightening from her eyes, and screams of horror rend the affrighted skies” (Pope 153-156). This embellished and exaggerated quotation is representative of the fundamental elements of Horatian satire used in this mock epic. Personification is employed to place emphasis on the seemingly transcendent effects of Belinda’s terror, as her screams “rend the affrighted skies.” As read, this example makes a mockery of the traditional epic, suggesting that the removal of Belinda’s lock has detrimental and almost divine implications. Pope uses personification extensively throughout, to add to the heroic colouring of the poem and in general elevating the subject matter.
In contrast to Pope’s epic style in The Rape of the Lock, Swift models his A Modest Proposal after a traditional staid economic proposal for the purpose of inclusion in British governmental policy. Swift, however, spins the standard on its head, shaping his daring proposal on the basis of ruthless, uninhibited economic gain at the expense of the Britain’s Irish colony. When the proposal was published anonymously in 1729, Ireland was in a state of distraught after essentially being “eaten”, or consumed by the British Empire. The protestant British completely suppressed the Catholic Irish population, and utterly neglected to consider the welfare of the significantly large impoverished population. As a result, Swift composed this harsh satirical proposal, suggesting that the Irish sell their children as food, in order to escape their economic despair. “The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders” (Swift 1115). This quotation is demonstrative of Swift’s economist persona, and leads the reader to believe that the proposal is serious in nature, and is meant to be interpreted literally. Other than his use of true Juvenalian satire, and inherent irony, Swift neglects to apply other literary devices to the proposal, due to its formal, academic nature.
Evidently, both Pope and Swift had a motive behind composing their two compelling yet divergent satirical works. Pope fashioned the characters of Belinda and the Baron as representations of Arabella Fermor and Lord Petre, Catholic British aristocrats who possessed an infatuation with decorum during the neoclassical period. These characters represent the facsimile of 18th century British personal ideals, and thus take the roles of pseudo-heroes in The Rape of the Lock. More apparent than Swift’s A Modest Proposal, Pope uses his elaborate mock epic to serve as a metaphor for the vain and superficial period in British history. The poem was intended to grasp the attention of aristocrats and society in general, compelling them to humorously realize their shortcomings, and spark a cultural shift. However, Swift’s A Modest Proposal is politically motivated, and undermined the British Empire’s colonization and treatment of the Irish. The proposal is presented in fine logical sequence and is seemingly well calculated. The “shock value” behind the suggestions and hidden accusations served as a testament to the moral inadequacies and limitless political behavior of the British. The work was deliberately published anonymously so Swift could avoid severe personal implications.
These two works of satire express their authors’ profound dissatisfaction with their society. Literature that pushes for reform of any kind, social or political, acts, along with entrenched tradition itself, as a dialectic force; it is the synthesis of that which is and that which is wanted that nudges society to a certain direction. Both Pope and Swift used their considerable literary talents to illuminate contemporary society, forcing them to acknowledge the shortcomings of the Neoclassical period. Through The Rape of the Lock and A Modest Proposal, Pope and Swift respectively aspired to influence the British mindset of their age and inspire it to move forward into a new era of true enlightenment with regards to social and political morality.

References
Pope, Alexander. “The Rape of the Lock.” Abrams, M.H., Greenblatt, S. & Stillinger, J. 2000, The Norton anthology of English literature, 8th edn, Norton, New York.
Swift, Jonathan. “A Modest Proposal.” Abrams, M.H., Greenblatt, S. & Stillinger, J. 2000, The Norton anthology of English literature, 8th edn, Norton, New York.
Satire British Literature Jonathan Swift Alexander Pope A Modest Proposal The Rape Of the Lock
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Jonathan J. Szwec studies English at University of Western Ontario in London, Canada.
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Swift 's Moral Satire in Gulliver 's Travels

"In its most serious function, satire is a mediator between two perceptions-the unillusioned perception of man as he actually is, and the ideal perception, or vision, of man as he ought ot be," (Bullitt, 3). Likewise, "misanthropy" can be understood as being the product of one of two world views: 1) The Pure Cynic or Misanthropist has no faith in human nature and has given up on any notion of ideals. This type lies and manipulates as a matter of course and these are the types that tend to run the world. 2) The "Burned" or Disillusioned Idealist 's misanthropy arises out of disappointment in humankind. In many ways, the second type exhibits more bile as he is constantly frustrated by what men do as opposed to what they ought to do. Jonathon Swift is the second type of misanthropist and Gulliver 's Travels is arguably his greatest satiric attempt to "shame men out of their vices" (Ibid., 14) by constantly distinguishing between how man behaves and how he thinks about or justifies his behavior in a variety of situations. Pride, in particular, is what enables man to "deceive himself into the belief that he is rational and virtuous when, in reality, he has not developed his reason, and his virtue is merely appearance," (Ibid., 66). This satire works on so many levels that a paper such as this allows me to deal with only three elements, and in a necessarily superficial way: the ways in which the structure and choice of metaphor serve Swift 's purpose, a discussion of some of his most salient attacks on politics, religion, and other elements of society, and his critique on the essence and flaws of human nature. Swift 's purpose was to stir his readers to view themselves as he viewed humankind, as creatures who were not fulfilling their potential to be truly great but were simply flaunting the trappings of greatness. Gulliver 's Travels succeeds in this goal brilliantly.
The form and structure of the whole work enhanced Swift 's purpose, as did the specific metaphors in each of the four voyages. Firstly, Swift went to great pains to present Gulliver 's Travels in the genuine, standard form of the popular travelogues of the time. Gulliver, the reader is told, was a seaman, first in the capacity of a ship 's surgeon, then as the captain of several ships. Swift creates a realistic framework by incorporating nautical jargon, descriptive detail that is related in a "factual, ship 's-log" style, and repeated claims by Gulliver, in his narrative, "to relate plain matter(s) of fact in the simplest manner and style." This framework provides a sense of realism and verisimilitude that contrasts sharply with the fantastic nature of the tales, and establishes the first ironic layer of The Travels. As Tuveson points out (58), "In Gulliver 's Travels there is a constant shuttling back and forth between real and unreal, normal and absurd...until our standards of credulity are so relaxed that we are ready to buy a pig in a poke." The four books of the Travels are also presented in a parallel way so that voyages 1 and 2 focus on criticism of various aspects of English society at the time, and man within this society, while voyages 3 and 4 are more preoccupied with human nature itself, (Downie, 281). However, all of these elements overlap, and with each voyage, Gulliver, and thus the reader, is treated not only to differing but ever deepening views of human nature that climax in Gulliver 's epiphany when he identifies himself with the detestable Yahoos. As such, the overall structure also works like a spiral leading to a center of self-realization. Or, as Tuveson puts it, Swift 's satire shifts from "foreign to domestic scenes, from institutions to individuals, from mankind to man, from others to ourselves," (62).
The choice of metaphor in each voyage serves more particularly the various points of Swift 's satiric vision. "The effect of reducing the scale of life in Lilliput is to strip human affairs of their self-imposed grandeur. Rank, politics, international war, lose all of their significance. This particicualr idea is continued in the second voyage, not in the picture of the Brobdingnagians, but in Gulliver himself, who is now a Lilliputian," (Eddy, 149). And where the Liiliputians highlight the pettiness of human pride and pretensions, the relative size of the Brobdingnagians, who do exemplify some positive qualities, also highlights the grossness of the human form and habits, thus satirizing pride in the human form and appearance. In the voyage to Laputa, the actual device of a floating island that drifts along above the rest of the world metaphorically represents Swift 's point that an excess of speculative reasoning can also be negative by cutting one off from the practical realities of life which, in the end, doesn 't serve learning or society (Downie, 282). And in the relation of the activities of the Grand Academy of Lagado, Swift satirizes the dangers and wastefulness of pride in human reason uninformed by common sense. The final choice of the Houyhnhnms as the representatives of perfect reason unimpeded by irrationality or excessive emotion serves a dual role for Swift 's satire. The absurdity of a domestic animal exhibiting more "humanity" than humans throws light on the defects of human nature in the form of the Yahoo, who look and act like humans stripped of higher reason. Gulliver and the reader are forced to evaluate such behavior from a vantage point outside of man that makes it both shocking and revelatory, (Tuveson, 62). The pride in human nature as superior when compared to a "bestial" nature is satirized sharply. However, the Houyhnhnms are not an ideal of human nature either. Swift uses them to show how reason uninformed by love, compassion, and empathy is also an inadequate method to deal with the myriad aspects of the human situation.
Within this framework, very little of human social behavior, pretensions, or societal institutions escape the deflating punctures of Swift 's arrows. Ewald states that, "As a satire, the main purpose of Gulliver 's Travels is to show certain shortcomings in 18th century English society..." (151). Much of the first voyage lampoons court intrigue and the arbitrary fickleness of court favor, (Eddy, 110). The rank and favor of the Lilliputian ministers being dependent on how high they can jump over a rope literally illustrates this figurative point. Gulliver himself falls out of favor because he does not pander to the King 's thirst for power. The two political parties being differentiated by the height of their heels points out how little substantive difference there was between Whig and Tory, (or today between Democrat and Republican), and similarly, the religious differences about whether the Host was flesh or symbol is reduced to the petty quarrel between the Big-Endians and the Small-Endians. Swift also highlights the pretensions of politics by informing the reader of some of the laudable and novel ideals and practices of Lilliputian society such as rewarding those who obey the law, holding a breach of trust as the highest offense, and punishing false accusors and ingratitude, but shows that, like humans, even the Lilliputians do not live up to their own standards when they exhibit ingratitude for Gulliver 's help and accuse him of high treason, (Downie, 278).
Of course, the perspective shifts in the second voyage, where Gulliver finds himself in the same relation to the Brobdingnagians as the Lilliputians were to him, which not only leads to some different kinds of satiric insights, but many which are slightly darker in tone. Most of the social and political criticism occurs in Chapters six and seven. Gulliver describes European civilization to Brobdingnag 's King, including England 's political and legal institutions and how they work, as well as some of the personal habits of the ruling class. Yet, even though Gulliver subsequently confesses to the reader that he cast this information in the most favorable light, the King still deduces that every strata of society and political power is infested with rampant corruption and dismissively concludes "the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." This echoes a basic message of the first voyage but the attack here is more direct and corrosive. The relative size of the Brobdingnagians adds a physical dimension to the King 's judgment and enhances its veracity. Also, "all the transactions of life, all passion, and all social amenities, which involve the body, lose their respectability in Brobdingnag," (Eddy, 150), from Gulliver 's description of the odious breast to his viewing of a public execution. In contrast, Brobdingnagian society has many things to recommend it such as excellence "in morality, history, poetry, and mathematics," although Gulliver ironically laments that these are only applied to the practical aspects of life and not used for abstractions. However, much of Swift 's political writings indicate that he, like the Brobdingnagians, favored a conception of government and society based on common-sense, (Lock, 132-134). The supreme moment of ironical criticism of European civilization occurs in Chapter seven when, after offering the secret of gun powder to the King and his subsequent horrified refusal, Gulliver declares the King to possess "narrow principles and short views!" Of course, mankind would never be so short-sighted as to turn away from learning a new method of injuring, torturing, or killing one 's fellows! Aside from this sharp comment on human nature, Swift is also alluding to the eagerness with which European nations would leap at such an offer as an aid to waging war against their neighbors.
The main focus of social criticism in the voyage to Laputa is on intellectuals, such as scholars, philosophers, and scientists, who often get lost in theoretical abstractions and conceptions to the exclusion of the more pragmatic aspects of life, in direct contrast to the practical Brobdingnagians. Many critics feel Swift was satirizing "the strange experiments of the scientists of the Royal Society," but may also have been warning his readers against "the political projectors and speculators of the time," (Davis 149-150). The Laputians excel at theoretical mathematics, but they can 't build houses where the walls are straight and the corners are square. Instead, they constantly worry about when the sun will burn out and whether a comet will collide with the earth. This misuse of reason is hilariously elaborated on in Chapters five and six, where the various experiments occuring at the Grand Academy of Lagado are described. Of course, the point is highlighted as Gulliver professes his sincere admiration for such projects as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers and building houses from the roof down. The satire in Voyage three attacks both the deficiency of common sense and the consequences of corrupt judgment (Quintana, 317).
Most of the criticism in the Voyage to the Houyhnhnms is directed at human nature itself, although the trend to more particular targets begun in the third voyage is continued with glancing, but increasingly direct blows to the subjects of war, (destruction clothed in the pretext of valour and patriotism), lawyers, (social parasites who measure their worth by their excellence at deception and therefore, actually inhibit justice), and money, (the greed of a few is fed by the labor and poverty of the many, as well as the relative uselessness and corruption of these priveleged few). In addition, Swift makes some very cogent observations on imperialism in the concluding chapter which point out the arrogance and self deception of European nations when they claim to civilize, through brutality and oppression, groups of indigenous people who were often mild and harmless. Of course, as Swift implies, the real goal of imperialism is greed. The most ironic point occurs when the author disclaims that this attack on imperialist countries does not include Britain, which history shows was equally as brutal as its European rivals and, in many cases, even more so, considering its Empire became at one time the largest of any European country. What I found most interesting was how many critics took this disclaimer seriously as an expression of the author 's patriotism, (Ewald, 143-144, Bullitt, 64). It seems obvious that Swift is making the point that Gulliver 's naive patriotism, the last remnant of identification he has with his own kind, is misplaced and it is Swift 's final, palpable hit.
The main object of the satire in Gulliver 's Travels is human nature itself, specifically Man 's pride as it manifests in "pettiness, grossness, rational absurdity, and animality," (Tuveson, 57). Gulliver 's character, as a satirical device, serves Swift 's ends by being both a mouthpiece for some of Swift 's ideals and criticisms and as an illustration of them (Ewald, 138-9); Thus, critiques on human nature are made through Gulliver 's observations as well as through Gulliver 's own transformation from a "naive individual...into a wise and skeptical misanthrope," (Ibid.,142).
Chapter seven of the first Voyage, where Gulliver is informed that he is about to be indicted for high treason by the Lilliputian Court, provides the most bitter satiric attack on hypocrisy, ingratitude, and cruelty (Tuveson, 75), yet Gulliver, and the reader, are able to distance themselves from these qualities by concluding that though these tiny creatures are aping human behavior, they are still not human. In the second voyage, both the human pride in physical appearance is attacked through Gulliver 's perspective of the Brobdingnagians, and Gulliver 's own pride in himself and his country is reduced to ridiculousness as Gulliver becomes the object of comic satire (Ibid., 76). Gulliver 's offer of the secret of gunpowder only underscores that he is a typical member of his race. From Gulliver 's theme of the excellence of mankind, begun in Chapter six, the episode concludes "with the shocking demonstration of what man 's inhumanity is capable of" (Ibid., 78).
One of the most interesting comments on the human condition is the description of the immortal Struldbrugs in Voyage Three. Swift 's treatment of the subject of immortality is characteristically practical and down to earth. What would it really be like to live in perpetuity? His answer: A living death. The main problem is that the human body ages and is not a fit vessel to house a perpetual consciousness. In relating this episode, Swift affirms with cutting precision that we have much in common with the rest of earth 's creatures; any superior reason we may possess, and the pride we take in it, does not exempt us from the natural laws of physical death and regeneration. In Book Three, Swift not only shows the possible perversions of reason in the doings at the Academy of Lagado, but also shows its limitations in shielding us from the natural consequences of physical life. Here, he implies the importance of a moral structure to human life; reason is not enough and immortality would only make things worse.
Yet on the surface, Book four seems to argue that reason is the one quality, when properly developed, that can elevate man to his ultimate potential. But ironically it is the horse-like Houyhnhnms that possess this perfect development of reason, whereas the Yahoos, whom Gulliver most resembles, are primitive and bestial. I agree with Ewald that Voyage four contains Swift 's clearest attack on human pride (154). Indeed, the quality of reason only enables humans "to aggravate their natural corruptions and to acquire new ones which Nature had not intended." Even a dispassionate view of human history would find it difficult to dispute this conclusion. Whereas the attacks on human nature in the first three Voyages deal with actions that are symptomatic of man 's nature-"the corrosive satire of the last voyage is concerned with the springs and causes of action" (Tuveson, 80), in other words, the essence of man. As such, the satire directed against the pretensions of court, political corruption, and the excesses of speculative reasoning may divert and disturb Gulliver, and the reader, but it is possible to distance oneself from the attacks. But the object of the satiric attack in the last voyage is man himself: it is Gulliver and the reader. Here, "Swift is attacking the Yahoo in each of us" (Ibid., 81).
Human nature is cut into two parts: The Houyhnhnms possess reason and benevolence, and selfish appetites and brutish awareness are left for the Yahoos. The microscopic analysis of the human form that took place in the second voyage is now used to analyze the defects of man 's moral nature, and it is pride that prevents man from recognizing his flaws and dealing with them. When Gulliver experiences the shock of recognition that he, too, is a Yahoo, Gulliver passes from being a "perfect example a character acting in ignorance of his condition" to experiencing "a terrifying insight into evil (which) is accompanied by all the bitterness of a profound disillusionment" (Bullitt, 61, 65). Yet, I agree with many of the critics who say that though Gulliver makes the mistake of identifying himself completely with the Yahoos, Swift and the reader do not (Ibid., 65). "For the truth, as we are meant to realize, is that man is neither irrational physicality like the Yahoos nor passionless rationality like the Houyhnhnms" (Ibid.) but are something in between. We are meant to be repulsed by the chilling calmness with which the Houyhnhnms accept death as described in Chapter nine as much as we are by the selfishness of the Yahoos, and it is clear Swift does not present Gulliver 's comic and absurd withdrawal from people as a viable solution. Instead, Swift wants us to be shocked out of the pride that allows us to deceive ourselves into thinking man is completely virtuous when he is not by experiencing, with Gulliver, our own limitations without making Gulliver 's final mistake. The solution to the human dilemma is not so simple as Gulliver 's rejection of humanity, and Swift 's final success, in terms of stimulating response, is that, after masterfully dissecting and presenting the problem, he leaves the application of his lessons to "the judicious reader."
For many critics, Gulliver 's Travels "is in a sense, a tragic work...in that it is the picture of man 's collapse before his corrupt nature, and of his defiance in face of the collapse" (Dobree, 447). Yet, obviously Swift felt that humbling human pride, enabling a more honest self-assessment, was absolutely vital to addressing the suffering and injustice so prevalent in human life. Contrary to many who label Swift a misanthropist, only a man who cared deeply about humanity could have produced a work like Gulliver 's Travels. Weilding the scalpel of satire, Swift cuts through our self-deception to our pride, the source of our moral denial and inertia. As we travel with Gulliver through the voyages, Swift brilliantly peels away our pretensions, layer by layer, until he shows us what we are and challenges us, intensely and urgently, to be better. In Gulliver 's Travels, Jonathan Swift continues to vex the world so that it might awaken to the fact that humankind needs saving, but it has to save itself.

Bibliograhy
Bullitt, John M. Jonathan Swift and the Anatomy of Satire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966.
Davis, Herbert. Jonathan Swift: Essays on His Satires and Other Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.
Dobree, Bonamy. English Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century. Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Downie, J. A. Jonathan Swift: Political Writer. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984.
Eddy, William A. Gulliver 's Travels: A Critical Study. New York: Russell & Russell Inc., 1963.
Ewald, William Bragg. The Masks of Jonathan Swift. Oxford, Great Britain: Basil Blackwell, 1954.
Lock, F. P. The Politics of Gulliver 's Travels. Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Quintana, Ricardo. The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift. Gloucester, Mass: Peter Smith, 1965.
Tuveson, Ernest. (Ed.) Swift: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964.
© 1994 Shirley Galloway

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It suggests that the proper use of reason is not to figure out the mysteries of the universe but to gain self-knowledge and attain the golden mean so prized by the ancient
Greeks and RomansAs Swift 's friend Alexander Pope put it,
6
Know then thyself; presume not God to scan.
The proper study of mankind is man.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Although many readers may try to isolate Jonathan Swift’s writing to fit only his generation, such a view is short-sighted. Swift’s satire was aimed at the English during the Enlightenment Age, but his biting criticism applies to failings that all generations share.
Jonathan Swift A succinct biography of Jonathan Swift which covers the high points of his life and work. Citation information is listed at the bottom of the document.
Jonathan Swift Biographical information which uses quotes from several of Swift’s books, including Gulliver’s Travels, to provide insight into Swift’s development as a writer. It briefly explores Swift’s political views and his relationship with Stella.
Jonathan Swift Oxford Dictionary National Biography article on the Scriblerus Club. Swift began Gulliver’s Travels while a member.
Jonathan Swift Chronological timeline of Swift’s life, relationships, and writings.
Jonathan Swift Associate Professor David Cody writes a brief explanation of Swift’s religious views. Some insight into how Swift’s views permeated Gulliver’s Travels.
Jonathan Swift Associate Professor David Cody explains Swift’s political views in this short essay. Brief summary of political climate in England and Ireland.
Jonathan Swift Article about Swift and the themes he developed in each of his books. Gulliver’s Travels is broken down by voyages. A useful reading list is at the bottom of the document.
Age of Enlightenment
Often referred to as “mankind’s coming of age”, the Enlightenment period is a time when the ancient ways of the world gave way to modern thinking. An influential figure in the Enlightenment, Jonathan Swift regularly angered those around him with his criticism of the “ancients” and “moderns”.
Enlightenment Fordham University’s links and essays that delve into different aspects of the Enlightenment. An excellent starting place for those new to Enlightenment ideas.
Enlightenment Highly readable summary about the Enlightenment with links and images of famous people involved with it.
Enlightenment A useful site that has short essays about the Enlightenment and American and French Revolutions.
Gulliver’s Travels Overview
Gulliver 's Travels Northrop Frye, literary critic, uses Gulliver’s Travels as one of his examples to distinguishes the difference between fiction, story, and novel. Useful viewpoint for readers who wish to determine how to catalog Swift’s satire.
Gulliver 's Travels A collection of scholarly essays on the genres of Gulliver’s Travels. Pages 19-21 offer insight from Frederik N. Smith about classifying the work as a travel book. (Google Books).
Gulliver 's Travels An essay by children’s literature researcher M. Sarah Smedman which explores why Gulliver’s Travels is regarded as children’s literature.
Gulliver 's Travels A lesson plan developed by Discovery Education. Answering the discussion questions towards the bottom of the page may help readers reflect on Swift’s intentions with Gulliver’s Travels.
Theme in focus: Satire
Jonathan Swift wrote, “Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.” Satire is the backbone of Gulliver’s Travels and Swift went to great lengths to provoke readers with it.
Satire A critical essay by English instructor, Shirley Galloway, which explores how Swift is a disillusioned idealist who uses satire in Gulliver’s Travels to show how humankind is not living up to their potential. While the bibliography at the end is not hyperlinked, it is a useful resource.
Satire Adam Howard’s high school essay “Perceptions of Satire in Gulliver’s Travels” is a readable overview of how satire is used throughout Gulliver’s Travels.
Satire A succinct overview of social satire in Gulliver’s Travels.
Theme in Focus: Abuse of Power
Gulliver 's Travels Short summary of how Swift uses his satire to deflate human pride.
Gulliver 's Travels Broken down into short segments, this essay examines several themes in Gulliver’s Travels including “Might versus Right” or the abuse of power
The enlightenment in Gulliver 's Travels Jonathan Swift 's novel, Gulliver 's Travels outlines a very odd sequence of events that are experienced by a sailor named Lemuel Gulliver. Throughout these adventures, Gulliver finds himself, on four different occasions, accidently coming across different races of peoples and creatures. These races teach him new languages, customs, lessons, and general knowledge of their own individual societies. These descriptions are many times believed to be Jonathan Swift 's way of critiquing The Enlightenment that occurred during the eighteenth-century all over the world. This critique brings a satirical look at religion, morality, equality, and the ability to adapt to other societies. In Gulliver 's first adventure, he comes across the land of Lilliput. In this land, there are two groups of people, the Lilliputans and the Belfescuans. These two groups of people used to be one society until there was a disagreement over how the people were to crack their eggs. The disagreement was whether they should crack their eggs from the large end or the small end of the egg. Because of this disagreement, there was a war and many people died and the Belfescuans decided to move to the other side of the island and start their own society (Swift, 25). This disagreement of cracking eggs is a comparison to the religious differences occurring in Europe just before the Enlightenment. Although the Lilliputan 's disagreement over cracking eggs is a much more minuscule and quite elementary disagreement than those of religions during the Reformation, there are still some comparisons. The religious reformations began when Martin Luther decided that there were several things about the Catholic Church that he disagreed with. When Martin Luther went to the church to complain about these issues, such as the ability to "buy" indulgences from priests, the church ignored these ideas. Therefore, after posting the 95 Theses on his thoughts for change and spreading his ideas, Luther decided it was time to branch away from the Church. Although Luther was one of the beginning revolutionists to go against Catholicism, there was hundreds of others who followed in his footsteps to create societies that would act in ways that they thought were just. Similarly, the Belfescuans were formed when the then-emperor cut his hand breaking an egg large-end first and decided eggs should in fact be broken small-end first. After this declaration, there was a split among the society and the two societies were formed to break eggs as they pleased (Swift, 25-26). On Gulliver 's second accidental journey, he comes upon a land of giants in Brobdingnag who are a very simple people, it seems. Unaware of the invention of gunpowder, Gulliver demonstrates the purpose of gunpowder to the king of Brobdingnag. The king becomes very frightened and decides that he does not want to have anything to do with the gunpowder, thinking of what kind of physical and moral destruction this could cause to his empire (Swift, 94). This is similar to the ideas of many Enlightenment thinkers, like Cesare Beccaria, who believed that humans should begin taking a more moral and rational approach at punishing criminals. With the absence of gunpowder, Brobdingnag has been able to keep crime rates low and overall morality high, it seems. Swift alludes that the introduction of such a weapon could lead to inhumane practices, such as the unfair punishments that were handed out before the Enlightenment (Coffin, 457). These unfair punishments, however were criticized by many philosophers of the Enlightenment, which sparked more humane practices for punishing criminals. Slavery is also a big issue during Gulliver 's travels. Whether it be when Gulliver was first captured outside of Lilliput, or whether it was during the time he was captured in Brobdingnag. Swift compares Gulliver to a slave during the Enlightenment. Many Enlightenment thinkers were too afraid to abolish slavery in fear of any revolts that might arise. "Slavery corrupted its victims, destroyed their natural virtue, and crushed their natural love of liberty. Enslaved people, by this logic, were not ready for freedom" (Coffin, 461). This is how the Lilliputans felt with Gulliver. They were afraid that if they let Gulliver be free all together, that he would be furious and destroy their buildings and kill their citizens. This is why they only allowed Gulliver small freedoms over long periods of time, so they could make sure that he was not a threat to society. With this gradual sense of freedom, Gulliver proved to have adapted to the Lilliputan 's society and turned out to be very useful in the community. The Enlightenment thinkers also believed that giving slaves small amounts of freedom would make for an easier transition into society (Coffin, 461). In addition to the equality of slaves, another main theme throughout Swift 's novel is the idea of equality for all persons. During The Enlightenment, there were social, economical, sexual and many other inequalities among different types of people. Swift incorporates this thought when Gulliver is in the land of the Houyhnhnms. In this land, there are Houyhnhnms, who are in essence a group of intelligent horses. Also, there are Yahoos who are a strange animals that are comparable to a human (Swift, 165). The Houyhnhms are much more superior and intellectually advanced than the Yahoos. Although it seems ironical that horses are superior to a human-like being, this is a way of showing how, for example, some thought that men were superior to women. Jean-Jacques Rousseau fought for many rights for people and the idea that people should not be ruled by a government unless they chose to. However, he still believed that men should be superior to women in almost all aspects. This is comparable to the Houyhnhms being superior to all Yahoos, without any regard for advancing the intelligence or social standing of the Yahoos. During the Enlightenment, women, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, began to make strides towards equality with men. Just as Rousseau compared the inequalities of men and women to limiting women 's duties to "being a mother and wife" (Coffin, 463), Swift shows that the inequalities of the Houyhnhms and the Yahoos as being very large and that the Yahoos were not to be used for much except labor (Swift, 172). Not only does Swift discuss the ruling of individual groups of people, but he also discussed the point of societies falling under strict rule. In Gulliver 's adventure to Laputa, he is told the many ways that the island as a whole is used to rule over the cities on the ground. They rule by using the ultimate power of being able to control weather and cause severe destruction to cities (Swift, 124). Swift is alluding that the island of Laputa is similar to that of absolutist rulers in England. Absolutist rulers have almost all powers to do almost anything they wish to those that they rule. However, similar to the city that successfully rebelled against the floating island of Laputa, such philosophers as David Hume and Immanuel Kant taught people that they should only be ruled if and by whom they want to be ruled. In the case in Gulliver 's Travels, the city below the island did not want to be ruled by the floating island, so they took action and were able to set up their own government to live by their own society 's standards (Swift, 126). Throughout all four islands that Gulliver comes across, he learns a new, totally different, way of living at each island. Whether if this involves a new language at each island, new types of food, or different ways to govern, Gulliver adapts to each and finds strengths in each society 's rules and realizes that their rules are well-suited for their specified needs. This ability for Gulliver to adapt relates to the ability of societies across the world to learn and accept new cultures and ideas from each other during the Enlightenment. This spread of cultures has allowed societies to adapt ideas that allow for the betterment of their society. Although Swift takes a very comical view of this using examples such as the fact that the peoples of Laputa must be hit with "flappers" in order to talk or to listen, this still shows that some societies act differently and Gulliver had to adapt also by being hit several times on the ears and mouth while in conversation with the Laputans (Swift, 114). Throughout Jonathan Swift 's novel, Gulliver 's Travels, there are many satirical relationships between Swift 's adventures and the events of The Enlightenment of the eighteenth-century. These relationships are usually very extreme, but do provide parallels, sometimes criticizing, main themes of events during the Enlightenment. Throughout his travels, Gulliver becomes a better-rounded person from interaction with creatures of all sorts. Similarly to Gulliver, the Enlightenment period put the world as a whole under massive changes in technology, culture and religion. These changes have allowed for the successes and downfalls of today 's society as we know it.

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References: Pope, Alexander. “The Rape of the Lock.” Abrams, M.H., Greenblatt, S. & Stillinger, J. 2000, The Norton anthology of English literature, 8th edn, Norton, New York.  Swift, Jonathan Davis, Herbert. Jonathan Swift: Essays on His Satires and Other Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Dobree, Bonamy. English Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century. Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1959. Downie, J. A. Jonathan Swift: Political Writer. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984. Eddy, William A. Gulliver 's Travels: A Critical Study. New York: Russell & Russell Inc., 1963. Ewald, William Bragg. The Masks of Jonathan Swift. Oxford, Great Britain: Basil Blackwell, 1954. Lock, F. P. The Politics of Gulliver 's Travels. Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1980. Quintana, Ricardo. The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift. Gloucester, Mass: Peter Smith, 1965. Tuveson, Ernest. (Ed.) Swift: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Although many readers may try to isolate Jonathan Swift’s writing to fit only his generation, such a view is short-sighted