Everyone knows the image of a navigator who is tied with ropes to the ground by little men. But in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, the protagonist does not stop at visiting the country of the Lilliputians. A work from a children's fairy tale turns into philosophical reflection about humanity.
The teacher, publicist, philosopher, and also the priest Jonathan Swift was originally from Ireland, but he wrote in English, therefore he is considered an English writer. During his life he created 6 volumes of compositions. Gulliver's Travels was finally published in 1726-1727 in London, while Swift created his work for several years.
The author published the novel without indicating his authorship, and the book immediately became popular, although it was subject to censorship. The most widespread edition was the translation of the French writer Pierre Defontaine, after which the novel was no longer translated from in English, but from French.
Later, continuations and imitations of Gulliver's story, operettas and even brief children's versions of the novel began to appear, mainly devoted to the first part.
Genre, direction
"Gulliver's Travels" can be attributed to a fantastic satirical-philosophical novel. The protagonist meets fairy-tale characters and becomes a guest in non-existent worlds.
The novel was written during the Age of Enlightenment or Late Classicism, for which the travel genre was very popular. The works of this direction are distinguished by their instructive nature, attention to detail and the absence of controversial characters.
essence
The protagonist Lemuel Gulliver, as a result of a shipwreck, ends up in Lilliput, where the little men take him for a monster. He saves them from the inhabitants of the neighboring island of Blefuscu, but despite this, the Lilliputians are going to kill him, which is why Gulliver has to run away from them.
During the second journey, Lemuel ends up in Brobdingnag, the land of the giants. The girl Gryumdalclitch takes care of him. Little Gulliver gets to the king, where he gradually realizes the insignificance of humanity. The navigator gets home by accident when a giant eagle flies away with a box that was the traveler's temporary home.
The third journey takes Gulliver to the country of Balnibarbi, to the flying city of Laputa, where he is surprised to observe the stupidity of the inhabitants, disguised as scholarship. On the mainland in the capital of Lagado, he visits an academy where he sees the nonsensical inventions of local scientists. On the island of Glubbdobdrib, summoning the souls of the dead historical figures, he learns about them the truth hidden by historians. On the island of Luggnegg, he meets the Struldbrugs, tormented by immortality, after which he returns to England through Japan.
The fourth journey takes Gulliver to an island where intelligent horses, the Houyhnhnms, use the labor of wild Yahoo creatures. The main character is expelled because he looks like Yahoo. Lemuel cannot get used to people for a long time, whose company becomes unbearable to him.
Main characters and their characteristics
- Lemuel Gulliver- A native of Nottinghamshire. He is married to Mary Burton and has two children. To earn money, Lemuel becomes a surgeon on a ship, and then the captain of a ship. Like most of the protagonists of the Enlightenment, he is inquisitive. The traveler easily adapts to new conditions, quickly learns the languages of each place he enters, and also embodies a conventional average hero.
- midgets. The word "Lilliputian" was coined by Swift. The inhabitants of Lilliput and Blefuscu are 12 times smaller than an ordinary person. They are convinced that their country is the largest in the world, which is why they behave with Gulliver rather fearlessly. Lilliputians are an organized people, capable of doing difficult work for them quickly enough. They are ruled by a king named Golbasto Momaren Evlem Gerdailo Shefin Molly Olli Goo. The Lilliputians are at war with the Blefuskans because of disputes over which side of the egg should be broken. But even in Lilliput itself, there are feuds between the parties of Tremexenes and Slemexenes, supporters of high and low heels. Gulliver's most ardent opponents are Galbet Skyresh Bolgolam and Lord Chancellor of the Exchequer Flimnap. Lilliputians personify a parody of the English monarchy.
- Giants. The inhabitants of the island of Brobdingnag, on the contrary, are 12 times larger than the average person. They treat Gulliver with care, especially the daughter of the farmer Grumdalclitch. The giants are ruled by a just king, who is horrified by Gulliver's stories about gunpowder. These people are not familiar with killing and war. Brobdingnag is an example of a utopia, an ideal state. The only unpleasant character is the royal dwarf.
- Inhabitants of Balnibarbi. To distract the inhabitants of the flying island of Laputa from thinking about the universe, the servants have to clap them with sticks. Everything around them, from clothes to food, is connected with astronomy and geometry. The Laputians rule the country, having the right at any moment to crush the revolt that has arisen with the weight of the island. People also live on earth who consider themselves smarter than everyone else, which is not true. The inhabitants of Glubbdobdrib Island are able to call the souls of dead people, and immortal struldbrugs are sometimes born on the island of Luggnegg, distinguished by a large spot on their heads. After 80 years, they experience civil death: they are no longer incapacitated, forever aging, incapable of friendship and love.
- guignhnms. The island of Houygnhnmia is inhabited by horses capable of speaking their own sensible language. They have their own homes, families, meetings. The word "guygnhnm" Gulliver translates as "the crown of creation." They do not know what money, power and war are. They do not understand many human words, since for them the concepts of "weapon", "lie" and "sin" do not exist. The Houygnhnms write poetry, do not waste words, die without sorrow.
- Yahoo. The Houyhnhnms are served as domesticated animals by carrion-eating ape-like savages. They lack the ability to share, love, hate each other and collect shiny stones (a parody of the human passion for money and jewelry). There is a legend among the Houyhnhnms that the first Yahoos came here from across the ocean and were ordinary people like Gulliver.
Topics and issues
The main theme of the work is a person and the moral principles by which he tries to live. Swift raises questions about who a person is, how he looks from the outside, whether he is doing the right thing and what is his place in this world.
The author raises the problem of the corruption of society. People have forgotten what it means not to fight, to do good and to be reasonable. In the first part of Gulliver's Travels, attention is paid to the problem of pettiness government controlled, in the second - the problem of insignificance and cruelty of a person in general, in the third - the problem of loss common sense, in the fourth - the problem of achieving the ideal, as well as the fall of human morals.
main idea
The work of Jonathan Swift is an illustration of the fact that the world is diverse and incomprehensible, people still have to unravel the meaning of the universe. In the meantime, an imperfect and weak person has a gigantic conceit, considers himself a higher being, but not only cannot know everything, but often he himself risks becoming worse than animals.
Many people have lost their human form, inventing weapons, quarreling and deceiving. Man is petty, cruel, stupid and ugly in his behavior. The writer does not just unfoundedly accuse humanity of all possible sins, but offers alternatives existence. His main idea is the need to correct society through a consistent rejection of the vices of ignorance.
What does it teach?
The protagonist becomes a kind of observer from the outside. The reader, getting acquainted with the book, understands with him that a person needs to remain a person. You should objectively assess your impact on the world, lead a reasonable life and not plunge into vices that gradually turn a person into a savage.
People should think about what humanity has come to and try to change the world, at least in a situation where it depends on each of them.
Criticism
The novel "Gulliver's Travels" was severely criticized, despite the fact that at first it was mistaken for an ordinary fairy tale. According to reviewers, Jonathan Swift offends man, which means that he offends God. The fourth part of the work suffered the most: the author was accused of hatred of people and bad taste.
For years the church banned the book, and government officials shortened it to curtail dangerous political musings. However, for the Irish people, the dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral remained a legendary fighter for the rights of the oppressed poor, about his social activities And literary talent ordinary citizens did not forget.
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Composition
Great English writer XVIII century Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) conquered world fame his satirical novel Gulliver's Travels.
Many pages of this book, directed against the bourgeoisie and the nobility of old England, have not lost their satirical significance even today.
The oppression of man by man, the impoverishment of the working people, the pernicious power of gold did not, of course, exist in England alone. Therefore, Swift's satire had a much broader meaning. (This material will help you write correctly on the topic of Gulliver's Travels. Novel .. Summary does not make it clear the whole meaning of the work, so this material will be useful for a deep understanding of the work of writers and poets, as well as their novels, short stories, short stories, plays, poems.) At that time, no other writer reached such accusatory power. A. M. Gorky spoke very well about this: “Jonathan Swift is one in all of Europe, but the bourgeoisie of Europe believed that his satire beats only England.”
Swift's imagination and ingenuity are truly inexhaustible. What only alterations did not visit his Gulliver! What did he not happen to see in his lifetime! But under all circumstances, comic or deplorable, he never loses his prudence and composure - qualities typical of the average Englishman of the 18th century. But sometimes the calm, balanced story of Gulliver is colored with sparkles of sly humor, and then we hear the mocking voice of Swift himself, who no, no, and looks out from behind his ingenuous hero. And sometimes, unable to contain his indignation, Swift completely forgets about Gulliver and turns into a stern judge, excellent at using such weapons as poisonous irony and malicious sarcasm.
The adventure plot itself remained unsurpassed in Gulliver's Travels, forcing readers to follow the hero's unprecedented adventures with intense attention and admire the author's ardent imagination.
When writing his novel, the writer used the motifs and images of folk tales about dwarfs and giants, about fools and deceivers, as well as memoirs and adventure literature that was widespread in England in the 18th century - books about real and imaginary travels. And all this made Swift's work so interesting and entertaining that the satirical philosophical novel, an exceptionally profound and serious novel, became at the same time one of the most cheerful, beloved and widespread children's books.
The history of literature knows several immortal books, which, like Gulliver's Travels, outlived their time, fell into the hands of young readers and became an integral part of any children's library. In addition to Swift's novel, such books include: "Don Quixote" by Cervantes, "Robinson Crusoe" by Defoe, "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" by Burger and Raspe; "Tales" by Andersen, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Beecher Stowe and some other wonderful works that are part of the treasury of world literature.
Abridged translations, adaptations and retellings of Gulliver's Travels for children and youth appeared in different countries as early as the 18th century. Both then and later, in children's editions of Gulliver's Travels, Swift's own thoughts, as a rule, were omitted. There was only an entertaining adventure canvas.
In our country, the classics of world literature are published differently for children and youth. In Soviet publications, not only the plot is preserved classical work, but also, if possible, its ideological and artistic wealth. The accompanying article and notes help young readers understand difficult passages and incomprehensible expressions found in the text of the book.
This principle is applied in this edition of Gulliver's Travels.
Jonathan Swift lived a long and hard life full of trials and anxieties, disappointments and sorrows.
The writer's father, a young Englishman, Jonathan Swift, moved with his wife from England to Ireland's capital, Dublin, in search of work. Sudden death took him to the grave a few months before the birth of his son, who, in memory of his father, was also named Jonathan. The mother was left with the child without any means of subsistence.
Swift's childhood was bleak. Long years he had to endure poverty, exist on the meager handouts of wealthy relatives. After leaving school, the fourteen-year-old Swift entered the University of Dublin, where medieval orders still dominated and theology was the main subject.
Comrades at the university later recalled that already in these years Swift was distinguished by wit and causticity, an independent and decisive character. Of all the subjects taught at the university, he was most interested in poetry and history, and in the main discipline, theology, he received a "careless" grade.
In 1688, Swift, not having time to graduate from the university, left for England. started independent life full of deprivation and struggle for existence. After much trouble, Swift managed to get a secretary position from an influential nobleman, Sir William Temple.
William Temple was formerly a minister. After retiring, he moved to his estate Moore Park, planted flowers, reread the ancient classics and cordially received eminent guests who came to him from London. In his spare time, he wrote and published his literary works.
It was difficult for the proud, quarrelsome Swift to get used to the position between the secretary and the servant, and he was weary of the service. After leaving his "benefactor", he again left for Ireland, hoping to find a less humiliating service. When this attempt ended in failure, Swift had to return to the former owner again. Temple later appreciated his abilities and began to treat him more carefully. He had long conversations with Swift, recommended him books from his vast library, introduced him to his friends, and entrusted him with responsible assignments.
In 1692, Swift completed his master's thesis, which qualified him for an ecclesiastical office. But he chose to remain at Moore Park, and lived intermittently until Temple's death in 1699, after which he was forced to accept a priesthood in the poor Irish village of Laracore.
Ireland, where fate again threw Swift, was at that time a backward and poor country, completely dependent on England. The British kept the appearance of self-government in it, but in fact nullified the effect of Irish laws. Industry and trade were in complete decline here, the population was subjected to exorbitant taxes and lived in poverty.
The stay in Ireland did not pass fruitlessly for Swift. He traveled and walked a lot around the country, got acquainted with its needs and aspirations, and was imbued with sympathy for the oppressed Irish people.
At the same time, Swift eagerly caught the political news coming from England, kept in touch with Temple's friends, and, at every opportunity, went to London and stayed there for a long time.
In the 18th century, England became the most powerful capitalist power in the world. As a result of the bourgeois revolution that took place in the middle of the 17th century, the foundations of the feudal order were undermined in the country and opportunities were opened for the development of capitalism.
The bourgeoisie, having achieved victory, entered into an agreement with the nobility, which, in turn, was drawn into the process of capitalist development. The bourgeoisie and the nobility quickly found mutual language because they were afraid of the revolutionary spirit of the masses.
Industry and commerce flourished in England. Merchants and entrepreneurs grew unheard of rich by robbing the masses of the people and colonial robberies. English high-speed ships plowed the seas of the globe. Merchants and adventurers penetrated little-explored lands, killed and enslaved the natives, "mastered" the natural resources of distant countries, which became British colonies.
IN South America, for example, gold-bearing rivers were found, and whole crowds of seekers of easy money rushed to extract gold. In Africa, there were large reserves of precious ivory, and the British equipped whole caravans of ships for it. IN tropical countries with the help of the free labor of slaves and convicts, coffee, sugar and tobacco plantations were cultivated, all kinds of spices were mined, which were valued in Europe almost worth their weight in gold. All these goods, which were obtained almost for free by clever merchants, were sold on European markets with a fifty-fold, or even a hundred-fold profit, turning yesterday's criminals into powerful millionaires, and often making hardened adventurers into nobles and ministers.
Stubbornly fighting with neighboring states for superiority, the British built the most powerful military and merchant fleet at that time, won numerous wars and ousted other countries, primarily Holland and Spain, from their path, and took first place in world trade. From all over the world countless capitals and treasures flocked to England. Having turned these riches into money, the capitalists built a multitude of manufactories, on which thousands of workers worked from morning to night - yesterday's peasants, forcibly driven from their land plots.
Solid English cloth and other goods were highly valued in European markets. English entrepreneurs expanded their production, and merchants increased their turnover. The bourgeoisie and the nobles built palaces and immersed themselves in luxury, while the bulk of the population lived in poverty and eked out a half-starved existence.
“Newborn capital,” wrote K. Marx, “exudes blood and dirt from all its pores, from head to toe” 1.
This gloomy, cruel epoch of the birth and development of English capitalism has gone down in history under the name of the epoch of primitive accumulation.
IN English literature all the features of this historical period received the most vivid reflection in the writings of Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, the author of The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
The first year of the new, 18th century was expiring. English king Wilhelm III was actively preparing for war with France - the only Western European country that could then compete with powerful England and challenge its international influence. In England itself, at that time, the struggle between the two political parties, the Tories and the Whigs, reached its greatest tension. Both of them aspired to reign supreme in the country and direct its policy.
The Whigs wanted to restrict royalty so that industry and trade can be developed freely. They demanded war in order to expand the colonial possessions and to consolidate the dominance of England on the seas. The Tories resisted the capitalist development of England in every possible way, tried to strengthen the power of the king and preserve the ancient privileges of the nobility. Both of them were equally far from the true needs and demands of the people and expressed the interests of the propertied classes.
Swift was alien to the demands of both parties. Observing the fierce struggle between Tories and Whigs, he compares it in one of his letters to a fight between cats and dogs. Swift dreamed of creating some kind of third, truly people's party. But this task in eighteenth-century England was impossible.
Swift had to choose between two pre-existing parties. He tried in vain to find political programs Tories and Whigs, anything that might win them his sympathy. But without the support of one or the other, he, an obscure priest of the village parish, whose only weapon could be his sharp pen, was unable to enter the political arena to express his true convictions. Personal connections with Temple's friends, who at that time held prominent positions in the government, led Swift to the Whig camp.
Without signing his name, he published several witty political pamphlets that had big success and supported the Whigs. The Whigs tried to find their unknown ally, but for the time being Swift preferred to keep a low profile.
He wandered through the cramped London streets, listened to the conversations of passers-by, studied the mood of the people. Every day, at the same hour, he appeared at Batton's coffee house, where London literary celebrities usually gathered. Swift learned here the latest political news and salon gossip, listened to literary disputes and was silent.
But every now and then this obscure, sullen man in the black cassock of a priest would intervene in the conversation and scatter such witticisms and puns in passing that the coffee house patrons fell silent so as not to utter a single one of his jokes, which then spread throughout London.
"The Tale of the Barrel" - English folk expression meaning: talk nonsense, talk nonsense. Consequently, the title itself contains a satirical opposition of two incompatible concepts.
In this book, Swift mercilessly ridicules different kinds human stupidity, which includes, first of all, fruitless religious disputes, writings of mediocre writers and corrupt critics, flattery and servility to influential and strong people etc. In order to rid the country of the violence of hopeless fools, Swift proposes to check the inhabitants of Bedlam in the most serious tone, "where you can undoubtedly find many bright minds worthy of occupying the most responsible government, church and military posts.
But main topic"Tales of the Barrel" is a sharp satire on religion and on all three of the most common religious schools in England: the Anglican, Catholic and Protestant churches. Swift portrays the rivalry between these churches as three brothers: Martin (Church of England), Peter (Catholicism) and Jack (Protestantism), who inherited from their father ( christian religion) according to the caftan. The father in his will strictly forbade his sons to make any alterations in these caftans. But later a short time when the caftans went out of fashion, the brothers began to remake them into new way: sew on galloons, decorate with ribbons and aiguillettes, lengthen or shorten, etc. At first they tried to justify their actions by reinterpreting the text of the will, and then, when things had already gone too far, the brothers locked the father's will in a "long box" and began between quarrel with yourself. Peter turned out to be the most cunning and dexterous. Peter was the most cunning and dexterous. He learned to cheat gullible people, got rich and was so puffed up with arrogance that he soon went crazy and put on three hats at once, one on top of the other (a hint of a tiara - the triple crown of the Pope).
Swift wants to prove with this satire that any religion changes with time, just like the fashion for a dress changes. Therefore, one should not attach importance to religious rites and church dogmas: they seem correct to people only in a certain period, and then become obsolete and are replaced by new ones.
Religion, according to Swift, is just a convenient outer shell, behind which all kinds of crimes are hidden and any vices are hidden.
At first glance, Swift ridicules only the ecclesiastical strife of his time, but in reality he goes further: he exposes religion and the prejudices and superstitions inevitably associated with it. This was already understood by Swift's contemporaries. Famous French writer and the philosopher Voltaire subtly noticed the anti-religious meaning of Swift's satire: “Swift,” he wrote, “ridiculed Catholicism, Lutheranism and Calvinism in his Tale of the Barrel 1. He refers to the fact that he did not touch Christianity, he assures that he was father, although he treated his three sons with a hundred rods; but incredulous people found that the rods were so long that they hurt the father too.
It is clear that the English clergy could not forgive the author of The Tale of the Barrel for the offense inflicted on him. Priest Swift could no longer count on a church career.
"The Tale of the Barrel" after its appearance produced real sensation and went through three editions in one year.
The book was bought like hot cakes and they tried to guess who famous writers maybe its author? In the end, Swift admitted that he wrote The Tale of the Barrel and a number of other previously published anonymous pamphlets. After that, Swift entered as an equal in a narrow circle of the most prominent writers, artists and statesmen of England and earned the fame of the most talented writer and the most witty man of his time.
Now Swift's got weird double life. While in Ireland, he remained a modest rector of a poor rural parish. Once in London, he turned into famous writer, whose voice was respectfully listened to not only by writers, but also by ministers.
From time to time, Swift allowed himself such eccentricities and jokes that at first confused, and then made all of London roll with laughter. Such, for example, was Swift's famous trick with the astrologer John Partridge, who regularly issued calendars with predictions for next year. Swift did not like charlatans and decided to give a good lesson to this imaginary clairvoyant, who got rich due to popular ignorance.
At the beginning of 1708, a pamphlet "Predictions for 1708" appeared on the streets of London, signed by one Isaac Bickerstaff. “My first prediction,” prophesied Bickerstaff, “refers to Partridge, the calendar maker. I examined his horoscope by my own method and found that he would certainly die on March 29 of this year, about eleven o'clock in the evening, from a fever. I advise him to think about it and settle all his affairs in a timely manner.
A few days later, a new brochure appeared - "The Answer to Bickerstaff", which transparently hinted that under this name the famous writer Jonathan Swift took refuge. Readers were asked to keep a close eye on what would happen next London pricked up...
The very next day the boys were briskly selling out a leaflet entitled "Report on the death of Mr. Partridge, the author of calendars, which followed the 29th of this month." Here it was reported with protocol accuracy how Partridge fell ill on March 26, how he became worse and worse, and how he later admitted, when he felt the approach of death, that his "profession" of an astrologer was based on a gross deception of the people. In conclusion, it was reported that Partridge did not die at eleven o'clock, as predicted, but at five minutes past seven: Bickerstaff made a four-hour mistake. he is alive and well, that he is the same Partridge, that he did not even think about dying ... The "report" was drawn up so efficiently and plausibly that one after another came to Partridge: the undertaker - to take measurements from his body, the upholsterer - to cover the room with black crepe, the sexton to sing the dead man, the healer - to wash him. The booksellers' guild to which Partridge belonged hastened to cross his name off their lists, and the Portuguese Inquisition in far-off Lisbon burnt the Bickerstaff Prophecies pamphlet, on the grounds that these predictions had come true and, therefore, their author was associated with evil spirit.
But Swift didn't stop there. Excellent in satirical verse, he wrote "An Elegy on the Death of Partridge."
Above modernity satirical novel"Journeys to some distant countries of the world by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then the captain of several ships" (1726).
Gulliver's travels. Cartoon
Continuing the tradition of realistic fantasy literature of the Renaissance (for example, Rabelais), Swift, parodying travel novels popular at that time, leads his hero to fantastic countries: Lilliput, the state of giants - Brobdingnag, to Laputa, Glubbdrobdrib and to the country of smart horses of the Houyhnhnms. Fantastic situations and fabulous images, however, serve Swift's task realistic image contemporary English reality.
He equally spares neither the old feudal aristocracy, nor the new semi-bourgeois ruling elite. He subjected to merciless criticism all social and political system 18th century England
He has deep contempt for the degenerate noble aristocracy - "a mixture of melancholy, stupidity, ignorance, tyranny and arrogance." Brought up "in idleness and luxury," these people, however, claim the primacy in the country, "and without the consent of this brilliant class no law can be issued, repealed or changed," Swift concludes with bitter irony, referring to the English the house of lords.
The royal court is a "garbage pit" dominated by venality, careerism, cringing, dirty intrigues. In Lilliput, positions of responsibility are given to those who jump the rope the highest. Among the various ways to reach the post of prime minister, not the least is the betrayal of one's predecessor.
Swift, however, notes that those figures are no better. who violently attack in public meetings the depravity of the "nobles". Pseudo-democratic phraseology was already then a hypocritical mask of careerists and intriguers. Parliament is no better than the royal court - it turns out to be "a bunch of pedlars, pickpockets, robbers and brawlers."
Swift also scoffs at the two-party system already taking shape in England during his lifetime. He thinks that the difference between the parties of the Tories and the Whigs is as ridiculous as between the two parties in Lilliput, arguing over which end to break an egg - with a blunt or sharp.
“If a monarch sends his troops to a country whose population is poor and ignorant, then he can legally exterminate half of it, and turn the other half into slavery in order to bring this people out of barbarism and introduce them to the benefits of civilization,” says Gulliver .
When the Houyhnhnm asks Gulliver what made people venture on risky journeys, he replied that "these were people who despaired of their fate, who were expelled from their homeland by poverty or crime." In another place, Gulliver says: “the rich devour the fruits of the work of the poor, who account for a thousand to one rich man,” and “the vast majority of our people are forced to drag out a miserable existence,” and this in conditions “when England, by the most conservative estimate, produces three times more food of all kinds than its population can consume.
The ideal social order appears to Swift as the idyll of the "state of nature" drawn in Part IV. The bitter irony sounds here too: the participants in this idyll are not people, but horses - the satirist, in essence, does not believe in the feasibility of such idylls. He tends to think that people of his day are becoming like Yehu - dirty, selfish, humanoid creatures with animal instincts. On this gloomy note, the work of the great English satirist ends.
Swift's satirical devices are diverse. Swift's fiction is distinct, for example, from Rabelais's. Everything there was implausible. Swift and in the depiction of the incredible remains the son of the 18th century - the "age of reason". He has everything strictly calculated. For example, how many times Gulliver is larger than Lilliputians, how much food he needs, what size mattress is needed.
Swift parodies the very genre of the travel novel. The combination of real geographical names with fictitious ones (Japan and Laputa!) creates the appearance of a vital document. This parody contains a polemic with Defoe, just as the story of Yehu is a refutation of Robinsonade.
Jonathan Swift is one of the classics of the English language. Prominent English writer Somerset Maugham tells in his autobiography how at one time the language and style of Swift struck him with their perfection: “I wrote off pieces of the text, and then tried to reproduce them from memory. I tried replacing words or putting them in a different order. I found that the only possible words are those that Swift used, and the only possible order is the one in which he put them. This is flawless prose."
Swift entered the history of world literature as the greatest satirist, whose unsurpassed skill still amazes readers.
INTRODUCTION
Swift's novel Travels into several remote notions of the world in four parts by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships), published in 1726 (Russian translation - 1772-1773) cannot be attributed to traditional genre utopian novel (or dystopian novel), although it contains features of both the first and second types of novels, as well as satirical and didactic works of the 16th century. .
Swift's book is connected by many threads with his modernity. It is teeming with allusions to the topic of the day. In each of the parts of Gulliver's Travels, no matter how far the action takes place, England is directly or indirectly reflected in front of us, English affairs are resolved by analogy or contrast. But the power of Swift's satire lies in the fact that specific facts, characters and situations acquire a universal meaning, turn out to be valid for all times and peoples.
In history European society The 18th century is known as the Age of Enlightenment. Enlightenment figures were not only writers, but also philosophers, political thinkers. Already on early stage Enlightenment Jonathan Swift criticizes emerging bourgeois relations. The modern Swift reader had to learn (and learned!) disgustingly familiar customs, signs of his own life and history in unknown countries and peoples. Such are the look, manners, features of Swift's talent: he was a wise philosopher, an inexhaustible dreamer and a witty, inimitable satirist.
Through the mouth of Gulliver, Swift evilly ridicules human vices, funny and sad, which, unfortunately, have deep social roots. Therefore, Swift's satire is still valid today. It is significant because it is deeply serious and pursues lofty ideological goals. Jonathan Swift was looking for the truth of his contemporary world. Lemuel Gulliver's Travels is a parody imitation, on the one hand, the search and discovery of truth, on the other. Swift believed that his first task was to approach and understand the spiritual life of the age. He speaks to his readers about religion, but not in the incomprehensible language of theologians; about politics, but not in party jargon, incomprehensible to the majority; about literature, but without arrogance and complacency.
The great work of Lemuel Gulliver's Travels is that it is deeply generalized. All things described by Jonathan Swift have the features and actions of the author's contemporaries. He could not beat the enemy openly, and therefore attacked him through allusions, analogies and allegories.
Reading Gulliver's Travels, we can clearly see that the identity of the writer is masked all the time. The author shows us his thoughts in a satirical and very fascinating text of the work. So Swift allegorically portrayed his experience of service strong of the world this.
We will build the image of Gulliver consistently, traveling with him, comparing, analyzing and reflecting on the actions of an incorrigible romantic who believes in justice, although he is disappointed in people. A man for all time, albeit fictional by the brilliant writer J. Swift, but at the same time so real when you open the pages of Travels. I would like to believe that in each of us there is a little bit of Lemuel Gulliver, albeit a naive, but infinitely truthful person. And the truth in our life is not so much.
CONCLUSION.
GULLIVER (eng. Gulliver) - the hero of the novel by J. Swift "Journey to some distant countries of the world by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then the captain of several ships" (1726). Swift's novel is written in the tradition of the menippea, in which the absolute freedom of plot fiction is motivated by "the ideological and philosophical goal - to create exceptional situations for provoking and testing a philosophical idea - the word, the truth, embodied in the image of a sage, a seeker of this truth" (M.M. Bakhtin) . The content of the menippea is not the adventures of a specific hero, but the vicissitudes of the idea itself. Such a statement of the question allows us to see the deep inner integrity, both of the image of Gulliver himself and of the work as a whole.
At first glance, there are four different Gullivers in Swift's novel.
The first is in Lilliput. In this country, he is great and powerful, like a true hero, and personifies all the best that is in a person: reason, beauty, power, mercy.
The second is in Brobdingnag. In the country of giants, Gulliver is a constant hero of comic situations. He performs the functions of a royal jester, a funny scientist midget. After listening to Gulliver's story about the political and socio-economic structure of England, King Brob-dingnag concludes that "the majority of your countrymen are a brood of small disgusting reptiles, the most destructive of all that have ever crawled on the earth's surface."
The third is an indifferent and calm observer, accurately fixing the madness, ugliness, perversions that he sees in the flying kingdom of Laputa, the country of Balni-barbie and in the Great Academy of its capital Laga-do, on the island of necromancers Glubbdobdrib, in the kingdom of Laggnegt, where he meets the eternally immortal struldbrugs .
The fourth is Gulliver from the country of guingngnms (intelligent horses) and yehu (feral descendants of a couple of Englishmen who got to the island as a result of a shipwreck). Here Gulliver is a tragically lonely and self-loathing man. And to be a man means to belong to a kind of disgusting Yehu, famous for their voracity, lust, laziness, malice, deceit and stupidity.
These different Gullivers are hypostases of a single image. The hero of the work, written in the Menippean tradition - a man of ideas, a sage - is placed by the author in a situation of collision with world evil in its most extreme expressions. Everything that Gulliver sees in his travels serves Swift to test the idea, not the character. Gulliver is normal, reasonable, morally healthy man, whom the author sends on a journey through the world of madness, absurdity, lies and violence. It is in relation to Gulliver that human nature is revealed: unsightly and disgusting to any rational being. Gulliver was looking for a place in the crazy world where a worthy person could find peace. And Swift brings his hero to the utopian country of the Guingngnms, but he himself returns him back to England, because in a crazy world a society arranged on reasonable grounds cannot exist. And this means that Gulliver must return home: intelligent horses drive out the hero.
Thus, we see that the image of Gulliver is based on English prose XVII century, in which the narratives of travelers of the era of great geographical discoveries are widely represented. From descriptions sea voyages Swift borrowed the adventure flavor, which gave the work the illusion of visible reality. This illusion is further enhanced by the fact that appearance between midgets and giants, on the one hand, and Gulliver himself and his world, on the other hand, there is an exact ratio of greatness. Quantitative relationships are supported by the qualitative differences that Swift establishes between the mental and moral level of Gulliver, his consciousness and, accordingly, the consciousness of the Lilliputians, Brobdingnezhians, Yahoo and Houyhnhnms. The angle of view from which Gulliver sees the next country of his wanderings is precisely established in advance: it is determined by how much its inhabitants are higher or lower than Gulliver in mental or moral terms. The illusion of credibility serves as a camouflage for the irony of the author, who imperceptibly puts masks on Gulliver, depending on the tasks of satire.
1. Journey to Lilliput.
The easiest way is in the first two journeys: “Once, having recognized the existence of giants and tiny people, you easily accept everything else,” said Dr. Johnson. The situation turns out to be such, a picture of reality in which it is not Lilliputians or giants who are not abnormal, but an alien - Gulliver. In the first case, he is abnormal, because, even if sincere desire, can't live a Lilliputian life. In the second - he is an Englishman, a European, a man of modern times.
Lilliput - England, the Englishman - midget. The fantasy of the first two journeys is an ironic device that touched on all norms - everyday and state. Moral concepts do not disappear. The kingdom of the Lilliputians is not only fabulous, but also puppet, Gulliver for the most part describes his games and fun in the revived puppet world and describes it in the most serious terms. He takes from the rule, has doll name Quinbus Flestin ("Man-Mountain") and performs his gaming duties. For a child, the essence of this game is the transformation of the present into a puppet, for an adult it is the transformation of the present into a puppet (Children's and adult performances differ in approximately the same way).
It can be traced how in the first journey Gulliver observes "Lilliputian England" in the right moral perspective.
At the first appearance of "a little man no more than six inches tall," Gulliver screams loudly in amazement. The little men swarm, squeak in an incomprehensible language, shower Gulliver with arrows that look like needles. After all, he can easily restore his rights. Just get up at night and trample on this whole army. "However, fate decided otherwise." Is a noble person with middle finger growth and reason with the hungry traveler through "threats, promises and regrets". Gulliver wonders if he has violated the "strict rules of etiquette", i.e. he looks at himself from the side with the eyes of midgets. This is the beginning of Mr. Lemuel Gulliver's transformation into Quinbus Flestrin, the Mountain Man.
Gulliver feels like a part of Lilliput. Another Lilliputian visitor is no longer a creature with a middle finger, but "a person of high rank on behalf of His Imperial Majesty." "... He presented his credentials, behind the royal seal, bringing them closer to my eye." For the reader - this is comical, for Gulliver - almost the norm. The emperor, the state council decide what to do with the monster thrown ashore. Lilliputian majesty is compared with European monarchs.
Gulliver feels and behaves in the Lilliputian world like a huge domesticated animal. He is put on a leash in the form of ninety-one chains with thirty padlocks. He is given a kennel, an abandoned temple, through the door of which he can “creep freely”. Not Gulliver, but the Man-Mountain - the tame animal of the Lilliputian emperor. The portrait of the emperor of Lilliputia is described as follows: “... his facial features are strong and courageous, Austrian lips, proportional arms and legs, graceful movements, majestic posture”; “... he is taller than all his courtiers on my nail; this alone is enough to inspire the viewer with a sense of respectful fear. "In order to get a better look at his majesty, I lay on my side." This is for Gulliver the monarch in all its splendor. The size comparison tells us that this is a comedy. Gulliver and the storyteller and actor. The Lilliputian point of view extends to Gulliver's own things. They are described as incredible structures. Gulliver watches how little men, knee-deep in tobacco, find a comb that looks like a grill in front of imperial palace. The ticking of a clock is to them like the noise of a water mill. Gulliver ends up in the Lilliputian world and remains to live according to the laws of this country. The emperor of Lilliput, “the joy and horror of the universe”, is “the greatest of the sons of men, who rests with his foot on the center of the earth, and touches the sun with his head”, and his possessions in a circle of twenty miles “extend to the extreme limits of the globe”. But Gulliver is not laughing. He signs reasonable terms "although some of them are not as honorable as I would like." "In gratitude, I fell prostrate at the feet of his majesty ... and I became completely free." And he is really free ... in Lilliputian. The reader even sympathizes with the little people on whose head the Man-Mountain fell. This country has its own little world, its own laws, even quite reasonable laws. Gulliver, the Mountain Man enters the life of Lilliput and gradually loses the sense of his own size.
Gradually, the little world ceases to be touching. Tenderness is replaced by contempt. It turns out that they are not worth the indulgence. More and more evil and caustic details emerge ... and Gulliver recognizes England in the reign of George I. The author wrote a caustic libel on political life recent years. Tories and Whigs, "high" and "low" churches, King George and Queen Anne, heroes of the war with France and Sir Robert Walpole, are ridiculed en masse as small, swarming midgets. Lilliputian quarrels are a pitiful sight. They are not cunning, vicious, shameless, but we are cunning and shameless pygmies. But since the pygmies still deserve attention and indulgence, warming up our interest, a chapter appears on science, on customs and laws, completely opposite to English ones.
If Gulliver has reason to despise the Lilliputians, it is only for similarities with his compatriots. We remember that when a fire broke out in the palace of the king of Lilliput, Gulliver extinguished it with a jet of his urine. Instead of congratulating him on such resourcefulness, Gulliver is told that he committed the gravest crime by urinating on the royal palace ... This caused the hero not even contempt, but some resentment for his harsh, cruel treatment. Let's pay attention to how Gulliver portrays the Lilliputians. He does not use any crude means of opposing strength and weakness. It is enough for the giant Gulliver to blow, and armies can scatter from this. He can destroy cities with his boots.
(see the analysis of the work in the notebook)
"Gulliver's Travels" is built in the genre of sea travel (a typical sign of most utopias and historical works). The novel is divided into four parts, which tell about the four voyages of Gulliver (the common hero of all parts of the book) and which describe four fantastic countries (the four-deck ship on which Gulliver sets sail is, as it were, a symbol of the four-part journey). All these parts are framed and connected by realistic sea travels.
The four parts of the Travels are four satirical modifications of human worthlessness. In the 1st and 2-1 parts, the decrease in the physical growth of a person is a satirical way to reduce the moral and ideological aspects of human existence. In the 3rd and 4th man, as it were, is divided into two independent creatures, funny and creepy in their one-sidedness: the inhabitants of Laputa, embodying the theoretical mind of man, divorced from worldly practice, and therefore blind and meaningless; and yehu - the embodiment of the revived instincts of a man freed from civilized "polish". All human life is shown in four satirical dimensions and aspects: in the 1st part, a belittling of human worthlessness, revealed externally, i.e. in political and social life; in the 2nd - a belittling of inner life (the person himself turns out to be a midget and all his experiences and actions seem worthless); in the 3rd - political worthlessness; in the 4th, physical and intellectual worthlessness.
Different researchers interpreted and saw the essence of the compositional unity of the novel in their own way. So, according to A. Anixt, "Gulliver's Travels" has a deeply thought-out composition, which is based on the principle of contrast: dwarfs - in the 1st part, giants - in the 2nd, super-educated people - in the 3rd, primitive creatures - in the second".
It should also be noted that Gulliver's Travels is written unevenly. Adventure elements are deployed in the first two parts, while satire and didactics predominate in the third and fourth.
Speaking about the sources of Gulliver's Travels, it is necessary to note the ancient and humanistic traditions, which, through plot parallels, constitute a special layer of the sources of the Travels, playing the role of grotesque and entertaining in the novel. In accordance with this tradition, motifs are grouped around the scheme of a fictional journey. As for Gulliver, this scheme is also based on the English prose of the 17th century, in which the narratives of travelers of the era of great geographical discoveries are widely represented. From descriptions of sea voyages of the 17th century. Swift borrowed an adventure flavor that gave fiction the illusion of visible reality.
Outwardly, "Gulliver's Travels" looks like a navigator's notes, but it's not. Gulliver acts as an atypical traveler, but as a "pasvilyant and slanderer". Enlighteners assigned the traveler the role of a herald of a new liberal-bourgeois world order, a sower of exciting information and dreams, an expander of horizons.
Captain Gulliver is clearly not thinking of either utopias or allegories, or anything "wonderful" or "romantic". Before the reader unhurriedly unfolds not devoid of fun, but above all punctual, replete with facts narrative.
Swift, before writing a novel, familiarized himself with all kinds of travel literature, extremely fashionable in his time, inserting whole pieces of special descriptions from it into his work (for example, the structure of a ship). But that's where his resemblance to her ends.
Analyzing the difference between Swift's prose and travel literature and reliable descriptions, V. Muravyov noted: "Gulliver's Travels" (especially the first two parts) still preserve and will retain until the end of the existence of any literature this charm of an old fairy tale that has come true in a new way. With a fairy tale, in contrast to a philosophical or utopian treatise, Gulliver's notes are all the more related because this is primarily a story about the hero's misadventures, and not the entertaining teachings of a figurehead; nor is it a geographic description, although all the scientific achievements of the latter are evident here.
So, the fairy-tale plot, combined with the plausible adventure flavor of a sea voyage, forms the constructive basis of the Travels. This includes an autobiographical element - family stories and Swift's own impressions of the unusual adventure of his early childhood (at the age of one, he was secretly taken away by his nanny from Ireland to England and lived there for almost three years). This is the superficial layer of the narrative, which allowed "Journeys" from the very first publications to become a reference book for children's reading. However, the storylines of the plot, being an allegory of generalized satire, combine many semantic elements designed exclusively for an adult reader - hints, puns, parodies, etc. - into a single composition that represents Swift's laughter in the widest range - from a joke to " severe indignation."
At first, the novel resembles a funny fairy tale. Gradually, however, the tone of the narrative becomes more serious, bringing the reader to the most important thing - the nature of man and society. "Gulliver's Travels" is a parable, an allegory. On the one hand, they bear an indelible stamp of their time, being filled with specific political meanings (for example, the struggle between the Tories and Whigs parties is displayed as a lawsuit between "blunt-pointed" and "pointed" in Lilliput, the very name of the kingdom of Tribnia is an anagram of the word Britain), on the other hand, they have a universal orientation, expressed through the satirical scourging of all vices. At the same time, Swift's laughter is as comprehensive as the theme of the novel, and covers all shades of the funny from good-natured humor and mild irony to angry sarcasm and venomous ridicule. Explaining such different shades of humor, as well as some inconsistency noted by researchers in the question of human nature, M. Zabludovsky writes: "In questions about the mind, as in general in all problems of enlightenment, Swift painfully oscillates between faith and disbelief, between utopia and despair , moving from one extreme to another, bitterly mocking himself and thereby mystifying the reader.
Researchers rightly attribute "Journeys" to a parody of the travel genre (in particular, to "Robinson Crusoe" - the parody is especially noticeable in the scene where a gray hinny serves as a kind of "Friday" of Gulliver in his construction of a dwelling). As A. Inger notes, "What distinguishes Swift's book from other travels is that there the reader is presented with countries unknown to him, and here he is gradually convinced that he was cheated", bringing "to sickeningly familiar places" and showing "to nausea familiar manners". Fantasy is used as a technique of estrangement, representing the familiar, familiar in an unusual perspective. Other writers of the 18th century used a similar technique (Montesquieu in the Persian Letters, Voltaire in the Innocent). However, Swift, with the same essence and purpose, a different version of the artistic device: at first, he seems to change the lenses through which his hero views people, and then he simply turns the usual relationships around, depicting a world where everything is the other way around (for example, intelligent animals control feral people).
Thus, "Gulliver's Travels" is a fantastic book, but the fantasy in it is unusual. Its unusualness lies in the fact that, as A. Inger notes, "Swift in this invented world does not fundamentally use unusual, unprecedented objects that science fiction constructs from elements of the real world, but only connects with each other in the most unexpected, in reality, unobservable combinations "For example, a fight between a man and a large wasp, a horse threading a needle. The fantasy of the first two parts - the fantasy of a visual comparison of sizes - serves as a way to create a two-sided moral perspective of the image: Gulliver from the point of view of the dimensional norm or reality from the point of view of Gulliver disproportionate to it - two complementary planes. In part 3 he normal person in a crazy world, traveling through the realms of contemporaries' dreams come true: the island of science, managing a caste of scientists, communicating with the dead, earthly immortality.
is in the book and Science fiction(in the 3rd part), and utopia, or dystopia (4th part), and elements of a political pamphlet (in the 1st part).
The fantastic situation of each journey creates a moral clarity of the image and in each case clearly explains some aspect of the life of society. In the 1st part - the political aspect, when modern statehood is to be considered (a typical example is the trial of Gulliver; here Gulliver acts as a victim, a hero). In the 2nd part, he acts as an object, and not an actor, through which the face of the modern world is revealed. In the 3rd - criticism of science, and in the 4th - the cult of reason.
In the world of each journey, the human world opened up in different ways, and the fantasy of each journey was a visual way of discovering it.
To some extent, "Journeys" can also be called a philosophical story (which spread in the literature of the 18th century) with its characteristic predetermined plot and images, designed to clearly illustrate a certain thought, thesis, or concept.
Finally, it should be noted that the unsurpassed nature of the adventure plot itself remains in the Travels.
Attempts to violate the composition of the novel when publishing the book in an abbreviated version (or withdrawing from overall structure any part) invariably led to the loss of the main merits of the novel. The composition of the book is a single whole, a logical construction, where each part correlates with the other not only the main character and the subject of the allegory, but also the plot itself. Thus, the fourth part follows logically from the third. If in the 3rd part on the island of wizards before Gulliver centuries pass European civilization from antiquity to the present, and he sees evidence of a gradual decline, both spiritual, political, and physical (unlike the Enlighteners), then the appearance after such a comparison in the 4th part of Yehu, people degraded into animals, looks like a completely logical forecast of the future and formidable warning.
Finishing the chapter on the genre and composition of the novel, one cannot fail to mention the opinion of the writer A. Levidov, who considered Swift's novel his confession, autobiography, a story about the wanderings of a normal person in an abnormal world. Gulliver's Travels, he writes, is a satirical, adventurous, polemical, parodic and moral work. But Swift called it a personal book." Much is true in this opinion. However, this does not mean that Gulliver can be identified with Swift. According to M. Levidov, "in the first three parts, Swift - Gulliver - the reader is one person. But not in the fourth. Here Swift asks the reader to step aside and, with the utmost frankness, identifies himself with Gulliver. For Gulliver is as active as possible in this part. In the 1st part, Gulliver acts, but not of his own free will, in the 2nd - he listens ..., in the 3rd he watches. And in the 4th, acting, listening and observing, he. In addition ... actively speaks out and makes a vital decision about his life."
And here we come to the philosophical and psychological concept of the novel, which is that "a normal person is thrown into a world of madness and absurdity, the only real world."
The truth of the Travels is not in the fact that they allegedly describe real creatures and incidents, and not in separate purely realistic scenes, but in a thorough portrait similarity of the world discovered by Gulliver and civilized society unfolded to its horizons. The “hoax” was that the genre canon of travel literature, brought to perfection (a description turned into a report), in Swift loses its usual soothing and instructive task, turning, in the words of V. Muravyov, into “a tool for hammering the truth about modernity into the throat , and not the presentation of "true" bourgeois myths".
2.2. Narration
The basis of the narrative form of Swift's novel is parody. Swift parodic uses techniques typical of the books of navigators and discoverers of lands. The parody is already in the name itself: first a surgeon, and then the captain of several ships.
"Gulliver's Travels" has a multifaceted ironic construction.
Two narrative plans - fantastic and adventure-real - are depicted by similar artistic means.
In the descriptions of the actual adventures, the features of the new realism that Defoe introduced in his "Robinson" are clearly visible; exceptional attention to the detailed and truthful fixation of everyday facts, the environment of the character. But the same fixation is also inherent in descriptions of fantastic countries.
A mixture of documentary (figures, facts, details) and fiction creates a special flavor of a factual fairy tale. Descriptions of sea voyages, storms and shipwrecks are in the tone usual for navigators' narratives. The appearance of a statement of bare facts is strictly observed throughout the book, starting with the first phrase: "I am a native of Nottingenshire, where my father had a small estate." As V. Muravyov notes, "The notes of Captain Gulliver have a place to be a document: it was precisely this attitude towards them that Swift encouraged." But each time, the story, quite plausible at first, turns into a fantastic description of an unusual, fictional country. However, even here Swift maintains accuracy for appearances, indicating the geographical location of a fictitious country. The illusion of credibility, enveloping the grotesque world of "Journeys" performs a threefold role: on the one hand, it brings him closer to the reader, on the other hand, it masks the pamphlet basis of the work, on the third, "serves as a camouflage for the author's irony, imperceptibly putting on masks on Gulliver, depending on the tasks of satire "
The clash of techniques from such different genres (imagination and exact calculation, fantasy and factuality) occurs from the very beginning, when Gulliver gets into a storm on the ship "Antelope" owned by Captain William Pritchard. A number of digital details tie the reader to his usual reality, which is torn apart by a terrible storm: "The hurricane took us northwest of Van Diemen's Land. We were at 30 2 south latitude. Twelve of our crew died from overwork and bad food, the rest were very exhausted. On November 5, a strong wind continued to drive us on and on; there was thick fog "
The style of the ship's log at first is not knocked out even by two messages that are essential for the transition to a fairy tale: ("The bottom turned out to be so sloping that I had to walk a good mile on the water before I reached the shore" and ("I lay down on the grass, very low and soft) .
This tentative realist introduction to fiction is characteristic of Swift. Similarly, in the country of the giants, Gulliver first notices very tall grass, and before the appearance of the Houyhnhnms, he sees many hooves on the ground.
A Lilliputian microcosm closes around Gulliver during his sleep, caused by fatigue, heat and half a pint of vodka. With this detail, Swift's classic introduction to the tale is strongly motivated. Further, as V. Scott noted, Swift borrowed from the ancient Greek author Philostratus, from the mythological biography of Hercules, in which he does not at all pretend to be plausible, to create an illusion of a life situation. Similarly, in Swift: the fantastic prototypes of Gulliver's travels and discoveries are imbued with a mockery of the primitive everyday notion of credibility, but Swift does this more disguised, by accurately listing figures and facts. “Through them,” writes V. Muravyov, “he turned the Philostratus scene into Gulliver’s, mythological tales into a realistic description. Having delved a little into this description, the reader could understand that he was being fooled: such an impersonal, icy, supernatural accuracy would be unthinkable in a story about a real incident.
The materialization of the Lilliputians through the outwardly scientific, but essentially Rabelaisian "accuracy" of figures and facts was the most harmless of ridicule prepared for the reader. Despite the fiction, the limits of the possible are everywhere set quite realistically. Therefore, for all the extraordinary circumstances, the account of the fate of Gulliver in Lilliput is much more like a memoir of court service than an adventurous and heroic fable. Reporting that Lilliputians 12 times less people, Swift throughout the entire 1st part, down to the smallest detail, maintain this proportion. Giants, on the other hand, are 12 times larger than people, and all sizes are in accordance with this measure. The most incredible inventions are presented realistically, ahead of time.
Gulliver's description of the country of the pygmies is made up of the most ordinary details for the reader. Lilliputians live like Europeans or even Englishmen, and everything happens almost the same with them. And Lilliputia itself looks like a "puppet cast from England."
It is characteristic that, as the researchers noted, in its description (and in general in the three books of "Travels") there are no metaphors, rhetoric, hints to the reader. And the point here is not only in the memoir style of writing, i.e. in the fact that, as V. Muravyov writes, "within the tight framework of the memoir scheme, the existence of the pygmies' empire is confirmed by a rigid memoir style."
It's also about the point of view. Swift is hidden behind Gulliver, and Gulliver is absorbed in his simple story. A look at outwardly unusual events is presented through the eyes of an ordinary average European, and this is precisely what becomes full of hidden ridicule.
One can disagree with V. Muravyov that “Lilliput is allegorical no more, but much less than a desert island in Robinson Crusoe.” It’s just that Swift’s allegory is much more deeply hidden and lies in the depths of human nature, while Defoe’s is more superficially, openly. The tale of Robinson is life-like in character, and Captain Gulliver is more busy describing the outside world. According to Maynard Mack, commentator on Swift of the twentieth century: "His (Gulliver's) travel report was made to resemble the true stories of travelers Swift's time ... Swift, whose goal in "Gulliver" was, among other things, to show the futility of these hopes (i.e., the hopes of the Enlighteners on the natural nature of man - author), deliberately adopts literary genres hostile to him.
The allegory is already contained in the very size of the inhabitants of Lilliput. The kingdom of the Lilliputians is not only fabulous, but also puppet. Gulliver for the most part describes his games and fun in the revived puppet world, but he describes it in the most serious terms. He is to a very small extent an observer and to a very large extent - a participant in these games, bound by their rules, in 9 points set out in the royal order. He has his own puppet name - Quinbus Flestrin ("the Man-Mountain" - "Man-Mountain"), his playing duties (for example, " - "once a moon, carry a messenger in your pocket along with a horse for a distance of 6 days of travel", his playing title of "nardak", "the highest in the state".
Dimension, the ratio of parts plays a huge semantic role in the novel.
On the one hand, as I.I. Chekalov, "the illusion of visible reality increases ... due to the fact that in appearance between the midgets and giants, on the one hand, and Gulliver himself and his world, on the other, there is an exact ratio of magnitudes. Quantitative ratios are supported by qualitative differences that Swift establishes between the mental and moral level of Gulliver, his consciousness and, accordingly, the consciousness of the Lilliputians, Brobdingnezhians, Yahoo and Houyhnhnms. mentally and morally." On the other hand, the ratio of parts is necessary for Swift to give the environment a different perspective of vision. The relativity of human judgments is clearly manifested when the scale changes, when Gulliver finds himself among the midgets, then among the giants. Court intrigues, international diplomacy and religious strife, when they are handled by tiny midget men, look especially comical. But, finding himself a kind of midget in Brobdingnag, the country of giants, Gulliver embarrassedly discovers that in the eyes of the enlightened king of Brobdingnag his wisdom of a "civilized" Englishman seems the greatest madness, and advice on how best to keep his people in subjection with the help of improved artillery are rejected with indignation. ("Having heard my description of these destructive weapons ... the king was horrified. He was amazed that such an impotent and insignificant insect as I (this is his own expression) not only harbors such inhuman thoughts, but also considers them quite reasonable and He was deeply indignant at the calm indifference with which I painted before him the terrible scenes of bloodshed and devastation caused by the action of these destructive machines.
The world, very similar to the European one, but shown in a reduced puppet size, looks like a mockery of the generally accepted, allowing you to see it in a different, smaller, key. And Gulliver's stay in the country of giants destroys many illusions. The most famous court beauties of Brobdingnag seem disgusting to Gulliver: he sees all the defects of their skin, smells the repulsive smell of their sweat ... And he himself, seriously talking about how he distinguished himself in the battle with wasps, how fearlessly cut flies with his knife and how bravely swam in a tub, begins to seem no less ridiculous to us than to the Brobdingnezhians, who make fun of these "exploits" of his.
Swift borrowed the use of different proportions from Rabelais. But if in the latter this difference in size serves as an expression of folk humor, a joyful hymn to a healthy body, then in Swift it acts as a clear and parodic display of many human and philosophical meanings.
Gulliver's Travels is deceptively and temptingly simple and straightforward. The reader easily and imperceptibly puts himself in the place of Gulliver, especially since Gulliver, especially at first, is completely devoid of individuality: this is an average, one might even say, an average type of a person of modern times (Everyman). In this sense, he is akin to Robinson Crusoe. In literary criticism, attempts were made to see in the four parts of the Travels some kind of consistent progressive development of the character of this hero. But these attempts have not yielded tangible results. The image of Gulliver is conditional: as A. Elistratova writes, "it is necessary for Swift's philosophical and fantastic experiment on human nature and society; this is the prism through which he refracts, decomposing into composite rays, the spectrum of reality." The title of a surgeon, and consequently, the natural science education received by Gulliver, make it possible to give the appearance of deliberate accuracy of reliability to his amazing observations and finds in previously unknown countries. But Gulliver, like the vast majority of his fellow citizens, for Swift does not even homo sapiens or homo rational (a thinking person or a reasonable person), but only, according to the formulation of the writer himself, homo rationis capax (a person capable of rational thinking). Nevertheless, Gulliver can also be interpreted as a psychological image, since he not only demonstrates the state of affairs to the reader, but discovers the truth for himself and draws his own conclusions from it (in utopias, the truth was not revealed, but stated). Such averaging serves not only to create an angle of vision of an ordinary person and his further insight, but also to easily identify Gulliver with the reader, which was an additional ironic subtext.
When analyzing the compositional features of the novel, one should not lose sight of such an important technique as the tone of the narration, by which Swift additionally (together with documentary) achieves the illusion of plausibility. He talks about obviously implausible things in such an impossibly calm, truthful tone, as if we are talking about the most common occurrences. Thus, as we see, the illusion of reliability is achieved, firstly, by the most exact observance of proportions and sizes, careful arithmetic calculations and factual information (for example, Gulliver reports that he eats almost 2000 servings from Lilliputians at a time; reports how much material went into it and etc., and secondly, the tone of the story.
Many episodes in the novel are connected with the practical work of a person.
