lecture eight jonathan swift.ppt

Lecture Eight Jonathan Swift and Gullivers Travels,Teaching Aims and Basic Demands:1.Swifts position in British literary history and his major works2.The social significance and artistic features of Gullivers Travels,JONATHAN SWIFT,Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin,Ireland,of an English family,which had important connections but little wealth.Through the generosity of an uncle,he was educated at Kilkenny Grammar School and then Trinity College in Dublin.Between 1689 and 1699 he worked as a private secretary to a distant kinship Sir William Temple,a retired diplomat.And there he also received a first-rate education in politics through contact with Temple and many other well-known politicians,learning much about hypocrisy,deception and corruption in the political world.,Life and literary career of SwiftJonathan Swift(1667-1745)was born in Dublin,Ireland,of an English family,which had little wealth but important connections.He was a posthumous son and in his childhood was dependent upon an uncle.He went to Trinity College in Dublin and after graduation became secretary to a retired diplomat at whose hand he met many important politicians and came to know much of the dirty and dishonest politics of his day.Later he became a clergyman and wrote his first important works,“The Battle of the Books”(1697)and“A Tale of a Tub”(1698).The former is a satirical dialogue on the comparative merits of ancient and modern writers,and the latter is a sharp attack on the disputes among the different branches of the Christian religion.,In 1699 to 1701 he was appointed to different clerical posts in Ireland and the years between 1701 and 1704 he spent in London writing political pamphlets in favor of the Whigs.In 1710,he deserted the Whigs and joined the Tories who were getting into power.In 1713,he was appointed Dean of St.Patricks Church in Dublin and in 1714,with the Tories losing their political power,he returned to Ireland.In Ireland,Swift soon threw his heart and soul into the struggles of the Irish people against their English oppressors.,In 1724,he wrote The Drapiers Letters to launch his fierce attack on the debasement of the Irish coin by one of the mistress of the English king,George.In 1726,he published anonymously Gullivers Travels.in 1729,he wrote his most sarcastic and most indignant pamphlet,“A Modest Proposal”.In 1737,his 70th birthday was celebrated throughout Ireland with bells,and bonfires.In 1742,Swift was declared insane and he died in 1745.,Swifts Major worksToday Swifts poems are seldom read or remembered.And of his prose writings,the more important works are his earlier essays“The Battle of Books”and“The Tale of a Tub”,and his pamphlet on Ireland,The Drapiers Letters and“A Modest Proposal”and his greatest book Gullivers Travels.,A Modest Proposal a bitter satire on the policy of the English government toward Irish;Swift in this article suggested to the Irish people that the best way to end their misery was to sell their one-year-old children at market as a delicious dish for the rich English landlords.Swift is making the most devastating protest against the inhuman exploitation and oppression of the Irish people by the English ruling class.The apparent eagerness,sincerity and detachment of the author adds force to the bitter irony and biting sarcasm.,A Modest Proposal,“A Modest Proposal”is by far the most consummate artistic expression of Swifts indignation toward the terrible oppression and exploitation of the Irish people by the English ruling classes.,Introduction to Gullivers Travels(1726),Gullivers Travels is Swifts masterpiece.The book contains four parts,each dealing with one particular voyage during which Gulliver meets with extraordinary adventures on some remote island after he has met with shipwreck or some other misfortune.a.to Lilliput b.to Brobdingnagc.to flying island of Laputad.to the country of Houyhnhnms(horses)Yahoos,First Part.A VOYAGE TO LILLIPUT,The first part tells about his experience in LilliputThe emperor believed himself to be the delight and terror of the universe,but it appeared quite absurd to Gulliver who was twelve times as tall as he.The two parties in the country are distinguished by the use of high and low heels.Religious disputes were laughed at in an account of a problem which divided the Lilliputians:“Should eggs be broken at the big end or the little end?”,In the first part,Gulliver,a simple straightforward man with some education of a navigator and a doctor,fails to build up a medical career to support his wife and children and reluctantly goes to sea as a ships surgeon.After a successful six months trading voyage in the East Indies the ship is driven out of its regular route by a storm and shipwrecked in a strange region.,Main Characters in the first part,Lilliputians Only 6 inches tallProne to conspiracies and jealousiesEmperorRuler of the LilliputiansDespite small size,loves being in control,exercising his power,Separated from his companions,he is cast upon the island of Lilliput(小人国)and while asleep,he is captured and bound by thousands of the inhabitants,the Lilliputians.They are all six inches tall and everything on the island is proportionally one-tenth of the corresponding things in the human world.He is known as“the Great Man-Mountain”to the Lilliputians who have great difficulties in feeding and housing him,while he,in describing the smallness of the Lilliputians not only in appearance but also in everything they do and say,accentuates the ridiculousness of these actions and words of theirs.,What the Lilliputians say and do is no other than miniatures of things in the aristocratic-bourgeois world of Swifts age.So the Lilliputian emperor is only“taller by almost the breadth of my nail,than any of his court,which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders”.,Chief ministers and candidates for high official posts are given their jobs in accordance with their skill in dancing on a rope or in leaping over a stick or creeping under it backwards and forwards.There is a violent faction between two struggling parties in the empire(a reference to the Whigs and the Tories),distinguished one from the other by the high and low heels on their shoes.There is strife and war between Lilliput and the neighboring empire of Bleuscu owing to a quarrel between the ways of breaking eggs,whether upon the larger end or upon the smaller one(a reference to religious controversies between the Catholics and the Protestants).,Then,being informed of a design to accuse him of high treason,Gulliver makes his escape to Blefuscus and then he returns safe to his native country and makes a small fortune by exhibiting and selling the sheep,cows and other livestock of diminutive(小型的)size that he brought back with him from the Lilliput.,Second Part:A VOYAGE TO BROBDINGNAG,In the second part,Gulliver is left alone in Brobdingnag where people are not only ten times taller and larger than ordinary human beings,but also superior in wisdom.Gulliver now found himself a dwarf among men sixty feet in height.The king,who regarded Europe as if it were an anthill.Gulliver was sold and used as a slave,mostly used for entertainment purposes.Gulliver discusses history and policies of his native country with the King,A VOYAGE TO BROBDINGNAGThe farmer exhibits Gulliver for money,In the second part,Gulliver again goes to sea and ship is again driven out of its course by a storm.The winds however subsides afterwards,but as Gulliver rows with some other members of the crew to a strange shore to get drinking water and wanders a little way inland,his companions are frightened by the approach of a giant-looking inhabitant of the strange island and sail away instantly without Gulliver who is then picked up between thumb and forefingers by one of the natives.These inhabitants,the Brobdingnagiants（大人国）,are sixty-foot tall and superior to the men and women of Gullivers society in many aspects and everything is proportionally taller and bigger than in the human world.,There the Brobdingnag king asks Gulliver to give him as exact an account of the government of England as possible,and Gullivers proud descriptions of the House of Peers with its nobility and bishops and the House of Commons and the Courts of Justice led to counter-question on the kings part which penetratingly point to all the terrible practices existing in those governmental bodies.Then Gulliver tries to create a favorable impression upon the king by offering to teach him the arts of war in Europe,but the king is struck with horror and reproves Gulliver for maintaining such“inhuman ideas.”Finally,by a strange adventure Gulliver is picked up from the sea by an English ship and returns home.,The third part:a voyage to the flying Island(Laputa),The third part deals with mainly with his accidental visit to the flying Island,where the philosophers and projectors devote all their time and energy to the study of some absurd problems.Their scientists are engaged in projects for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers,turning ice into gunpowder and making cloth from cobweb.,Fourth part:a voyage to the country of the Houynhms,Final Journey to the Country of the HouyhnhnmsHorses rule the deformed YahoosGulliver banished from their societyFeel he is a threat to their civilizationAware he has a resemblance to a Yahoo,The fourth part deals with“A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms”and has generally been considered the best part of the book.Gulliver now as captain of a ship once more sails forth but his sailors conspire against him.They cast him upon the shore of an unknown island,the island of the Houyhnhnms who are horses endowed with reason and who have in their country a species of wild animals called Yahoos.These horses are intelligent and extremely noble and have all admirable qualities,while the Yahoos who are hairy,naked and wild,low,vile and despicable resemble human beings in many ways.,After learning the language of the Houyhnhnms,Gulliver is requested to talk about the conditions of his own country:the past and the present of England and Europe,the bloody wars and the great disasters of them,the laws and lawyers in England,the greed for money prevalent in the English society,the luxurious life and moral depravity of the noblemen in his country.Finally,Gulliver expresses his wish to remain forever with the Houyhnhnms but it is not granted and then he builds a canoe and sails to an uninhabited island and there is seized and carried by force into a Portuguese ship and he returns to England.,The social significance of Gullivers Travels Gullivers Travels is Swifts highest achievement in literature,and is a satire on the whole English society of the early 18th century,touching upon the political,religious,legal,military,scientific,philosophical as well as literary institutions and the men who make their careers there.It exposes the ugly appearances of the British ruling classes,showing their hypocrisy and greed,their intrigues and corruption,their ruthless oppression and exploitation of the common people.,It criticizes the declining feudalism and the new capitalist relations,ridiculing and attacking the vestiges of feudal traditions at the English court and the dominant importance of money in human relations in the society.It attacks the aggressive wars and colonialism and the religious disputes and persecution in the 18th century,The artistic features of Gullivers Travels Gullivers Travels was not only significant in its own day in England as an expose of the social evils of the time but has had much influence since its age and outside England.As a fantasy and a realistic work of fiction,it has its own unique artistic features:imagination,exaggeration,symbolism,irony,allusion,humor,description of details,etc.,Study of the excerpt from Gullivers Travels:That in some fields of his country there are certain shining stones of several colours,whereof the yahoos are violently fond:and when part of these stones is fixed in the earth,as it sometimes happens,they will dig with their claws for whole days to get them out;then carry them away,and hide them by heaps in their kennels(狗窝);but still looking round with great caution,for fear their comrades should find out their treasure.My master said,he could never discover the reason of this unnatural appetite,or how these stones could be of any use to a yahoo;but now he believed it might proceed from the same principle of avarice(贪婪)which I had ascribed to mankind.,That he had once,by way of experiment,privately removed a heap of these stones from the place where one of his yahoos had buried it;whereupon(于是)the sordid(肮脏的)animal,missing his treasure,by his loud lamenting brought the whole herd to the place,there miserably howled,then fell to biting and tearing the rest,began to pine away(消瘦),would neither eat,nor sleep,nor work,till he ordered a servant privately to convey the stones into the same hole,and hide them as before;which,when his yahoo had found,he presently recovered his spirits and good humour,but took good care to remove them to a better hiding place,and has ever since been a very serviceable brute.,