(Summary)
First Voyage (Liliput). Gulliver, ship's doctor on the Anteope in shipwreked near Van Diemend's Land (Tasmania) but mananges to make shore, where he falls unconcious. Upon awakening, he finds himself a captive of humans only six inches tall (possibly derived from Philostrautus's account of the pygmies capturing the sleeping Hercules). After learning the Liliputan language and obeying the laws of his diminutive captors, Gulliver is permited to tour the capital city of Mildendo, which he finds a tiny republic of contemporany European cityes. Gulliver becomes a nobleman of Liliput when he single handedly carries of the entire warfleet of the hostile neighboring kindom, Blefuscu, but Gulliver champions a generous peace, which the Lilipuian parliament approves. In disfavor at court because he put out a fire in qweens palace, Gulliver visits Blefuscu. Here he finds a battered ship's boat cast ashore. With the aid of Blefuscar workers he refurbishes the boat and sails away, to be picked up by an English vessel.
Swift's incredible ingeniuty in adapting everything to the six-inch scale of Liliputians has ironically rendered this adult santire a nursery favourite. Swift calculates exactly how many Liliputian blankets have to be sewn together for Gulliver, and he even allows for the hemming. Beguiled, the reader hardly realizes that he is being led into santire, but the major attention of this book is to demonstrate the pettines of human affairs as viewed by a giant from another world.
The vehemence of Whing and Tory becomes preposterous in th Liliputian contention of the low-heelers (Low Church) versus the high-heelers (High Church), and the battling of Catholics and Protestants is starized in the contention of the Big-Enders versus the Little-Enders (Which end off the egg should be cracked first?).
The war between England and France is reduced to the absurd comflict between Liliput and Blefuscu, swift also incorporated muchspecific santire on English politics arownd 1712-15 Nonetherless, certain passagers in chapter 6, treating of law andeducation in Liliput, are essentially utopiain, picturing this minute wold as the rational ideal.
Second Voyage (Brobdingang). Wandering away from a landing party of the Adventure on the coast of Great Tartary, Gulliver is trapped in a field of giant corn forty feet high. Brobodignagiants themselves are normaly sixty feet tall; Gulliver is captured and becomes the pet of a nine-year-old farmer's daughter, not yet over forty feet tall. As a curiosity he is sold to the queen of the kingdom, who lets the court physicians and philosophers study Gulliver as a frak. The puny Gulliver has narrow escapes from rats the size of lions, wasps as large as partridges, and hailstones as large as tennis balls. To the tiny fellow the giants of Brobdingang often appear ugly and ill favored, but this land knows only peace and simplicity. The nonarch is horrified at European politics and disgusted at European warfare. "I cannot but conclude," the giant ruler sadly opines, "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". At the end of the account a huge bird snatches up the portable box containing Gulliver and drops hin into the sea, fromwhence he is hauled aboard a vessel bound for England.
Swift's ingenuity again is unflagging, with everything in Brobdingdang suitably ten times its normal size as everything in Liliput was tenth of normal size. Gulliver is the prime naif (Does the name Gulliver come from "gullible"?) wholly commited to the glories of European civilization; however, the more he praises the culture from wich he came, the more monsrtous it appears in comparasion to the rational giants of Brobdingang. Swift's attack is centred upon human pride, , and this book denounces man's vanit yconcentring his mind, man's pleasure in his own body, and man's unconscionable behaviour toward his fellows.
The principal edition of the Jonathan Swift's novel named Travels in Several Remote Nations of the World by Samuel Gulliver appeared in 1726.
