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Part 1. A voyage to Lilliput.
Part 2. A voyage to Brobdingnag.
Part3. A voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glabdubdrib
and Japan.
Part 4. A voyage to the co unty of the Houyhnhnms.
Thus, Gulliver first visits Lilliputians-tiny people whose bodies
and surroundings are only
1 / 1 2
the size of normal people and
things. At first (he Lilliputians treat Gulliver well. Gulliver helps
them, but after a time they turn against him and he escapes their
land.
G u lliv er’s second voyage takes him to the country o f
Brobdingnag, where people are
1 2
times larger than Gulliver and
amused by his tiny size.
Gulliver’s third voyage takes him to several strange kingdoms.
The conduct o f the strange people o f these countries shows the
types o f foolishness Swift saw in his world. For example, in the
academy o f Lagado, scholars waist all their time on useless projects
such as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Here Swift satirizes
impractical scientists and philosophers.
In his last voyage, Gulliver discovers a land ruled by wise and
gentle horses called Houyhnhnms. Stupid, savage creatures called
Yahoos zJso live there. The Yahoos look like human beings. The
Houyhnhnms dislike and distrust Gulliver because he looks like
Yahoos, and they believe he is also a Yahoo. Gulliver wishes to
stay in the company o f the Houyhnhnms, but they force him to
leave.
Thus in each country Gulliver makes observations about society
in general. He finally returns to England with a painful recognition
o f his own country’s flaws.
The greatest merit of the novel is the satirical description o f all
the vices o f the society o f the time. Under the cloak o f fantasy
Swift satirized the politics o f the time, religious prejudices, wars
o f ambition and the absur dity o f many aspects of science.
Swift’s style is uniquely simple. Every line and every detail is
alive but it is full of biting satire. The author presents the most
improbable situations with the utmost gravity and makes the reader
believe them. Defoe’s prose is clear, it is a clarity sustained by the
most vigorous mind of the century. It defies imitation. Never is
the meaning obscure, and each argument is developed with a deadly
certainty, not through rhetoric, but by putting the proper words in
the proper places.
Jonathan Swift had a great influence on the writers who came
after him. His work has become popular in all languages. Like
Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe”, it has the merit both of amusing
children and making rr.en think.
Questions and Tasks
1. What role did Sir William Temple play in Swift’s literary
career?
2. Speak about Swift’s first satire.
3. What did Swift criticize in his pamphlets?
4. When was Swift's masterpiece “Gulliver’s Travels” written
and why did it make a great sensation?
5. Whom did Swift mean to ridicule when describing the
country of Lilliput and the Lilliputian?
6
. Whom is Swift’s satire directed at when he describes the
flying island and the way taxes are collected from the people?
7. What was Swift 's attitude towards England’s war policy?
8
. Why did Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” become popular in all
languages?
The Development of the English Realistic Novel
The development o f the novel is one ofthe great achievements
o f English literature. The foundations of early realism in English
literature were laid by Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift. Their
novels were of a new type and with a new hero, but they were
based on imaginary voyages and adventures supposed to take
place far from England. Gradually the readers’ tastes changed.
They wanted to find more and more of their own life reflected in
literature. These demands were satisfied when the great novels
o f Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett
appeared one after another. They marked a new stage in the
development of literature. The greatest merit o f these novelists is
in their deep sympathy for the common man. The common man is
shown in his actual surroundings, which makes him convincing,
believab e, and true to life. With Fielding the novel had come of
age. He had established it in one of its most notable forms, middle-
class real ism. He had endowed it with a conception o f forms, and
made it an art not unworthy of comparison with the pictorial art.
Many scholars consider Samuel Richardson’s “Pamela” (1740)
tp be the first true novel in English. This book is highly moralistic.
In contrast, the novels o f Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett are
humorous and satiric. Laurence Stem was another leading novelist
o f the period. With the above-mentioned writers, yet background
alone
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lacking, and was to remain absent until Walter Scott
gave it lavishly in his fictions. Above all, he had less reticence
than Richardson, and less than any ofthe novelists that succeeded
him in the nineteenth century.
Henry Fielding
(1707 - 1754)
Henry Fielding was the greatest representative of realism in
the 18,h century. He was from an aristocratic family and studied
at the old-established boys school of Eton. At the age of twenty
he started writing for the stage, and his first play “Love in Several
Masques”
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