Vintage canada edition, 1998 Copyright 1996 by Alberto Manguel

particular tone and value. Filed under Fiction, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is a humorous novel of
adventure; under Sociology, a satirical study of England in the eighteenth century; under Children’s
Literature, an entertaining fable about dwarfs and giants and talking horses; under Fantasy, a precursor
of science fiction; under Travel, an imaginary voyage; under Classics, a part of the Western literary
canon. Categories are exclusive; reading is not — or should not be. Whatever classifications have been
chosen, every library tyrannizes the act of reading, and forces the reader — the curious reader, the alert
reader — to rescue the book from the category to which it has been condemned.
Colossal head of the first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great. (photo credit 13.6)

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