Probably the Foremost Prose Satirist in the English Language

Jonathan Swift - Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 – October 19, 1745) was an Irish cleric, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, and poet, famous for works like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal. - Probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language. - Swift published all of his works under pseudonyms or anonymously. Major prose works - Gulliver's Travels (1726). A great satire of the times. A misanthropic anatomy of human nature. Each of the 4 books has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride. Gulliver's Travels - Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales". - The book became tremendously popular as soon as it was published. - George Orwell declared it to be among the six indispensable books in world literature. - The book proper then is divided into four parts, which are as follows. Part I: A Voyage To Lilliput - On his first voyage, Gulliver finds himself a prisoner of a race of 6 inch (15cm) tall people, inhabitants of the neighbouring and rival countries of Lilliput and Blefuscu. - The feuding between the Lilliputians and the Blefuscudans is meant to represent the feuding countries of England and France, but the reason for the war is meant to satirize the feud between Catholics and Protestants. Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag - While exploring a new country, Gulliver is abandoned by his companions and found by a farmer who is 72 feet (22 meters) tall. - He is kept as a favourite at court where he discusses the state of Europe with the King, who is not impressed. Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg and Japan - Gulliver's ship is attacked by pirates. Fortunately he is rescued by the flying island of Laputa, a kingdom devoted to the arts of music and mathematics but utterly unable to use these for practical ends Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms - Gulliver returns to sea where his crew mutinies. He is abandoned ashore and comes first upon a race of deformed creatures to which he conceives a violent antipathy. Shortly thereafter he meets a horse and comes to understand that the horses (Houyhnhnm or "the perfection of nature") are the rulers and the deformed creatures ("Yahoos") are human beings in the basest form. - Gulliver comes to both admire and emulate the Houyhnhnms and their lifestyle. - However, an Assembly of the Houyhnhnms rules that Gulliver, a Yahoo with some semblance of reason, is a danger to their civilization and he is expelled. -He returns to his home in England but is unable to reconcile himself to living among Yahoos; he becomes a recluse, remaining in his house, largely avoiding his family, and spending several hours a day speaking with the horses in his stables. Major themes - Gulliver's Travels has been called a proto-Science Fiction and a forerunner of the modern novel. - It is a satirical view of the state of European government, and of petty differences between religions. - Each part is the reverse of the preceding part — Gulliver is big/small/sensible/ignorant, the countries are sophisticated/simple/scientific/natural, forms of Government are worse/better/worse/better than England's. - No form of government is ideal — the simplistic Brobdingnagians enjoy public executions and have streets infested with beggars, the honest and upright Houyhnhnms who have no word for lying are happy to suppress the true nature of Gulliver as a Yahoo and equally unconcerned about his reaction to being expelled - Specific individuals may be good even where the race is bad — Gulliver finds a friend in each of his travels and, despite Gulliver's rejection of and horror toward all Yahoos, is treated very well by the Portuguese captain, Don Pedro, who returns him to England at the novel's end.