My comments are drawn from The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, from the introduction to Cliff's Notes on Gulliver's Travels, and from an essay called "The Pride of Lemuel Gulliver," by Samuel Holt Monk. That essay can be found in the Norton Critical Edition of Gulliver's Travels.

The life of Jonathan Swift spanned a time of significant religious and political change in England and Europe. As you learned from your reading of Voltaire, both the monarchy and the absolute power of the Roman Catholic Church were in decline in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, during and after the European Enlightenment. On the other hand, the power of the upper middle class, in particular the banking and merchant class, was on the rise. The result was political and social instability and upheaval. That upheaval, and the endless political bickering it caused, are the real subject of the first two books of Gulliver's Travels, the voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag.

Political commentary also figures in books three and four, but these books focus primarily on satire of the intellectual establishment of Swift's time. According to Samuel Holt Monk, Swift was critical of five key Enlightenment ideas that went on to become essential assumptions of modern thought. His criticism of these ideas makes up the substance of books three and four. Briefly, these ideas are:

1. Rationalism and Deism.  This is the idea that the world can be understood using reason alone, that it makes sense, that it's logical, and that even God can be understood by relying only on common sense.
2. Scientific materialism; that is, the idea that nature can be understood by science, and that science and technology can solve all man's problems.
3. Humanism; that is, faith in the wisdom of man and the goodness of human nature, whether informed by religion or not. (In practice, this often leads to atheism, a repudiation of religion, or agnosticism, a repudiation of the importance of religion.)
4. Economic materialism; the growth of an abstract economy based on money rather than on custody of land and care of the things of the earth.
5. Big government; that is, the idea that all man's problems can be solved by centralized political and economic management of social affairs.

The intellectual basis for Swift's criticism of the Enlightenment is also discussed in your handout called "Some thoughts before reading Voltaire."

Jonathan Swift is a wonderful writer, and all of his work, especially Gulliver's Travels, is quite funny. Our film version of the novel, starring Ted Danson, is not so funny. Nor is it successful in presenting Swift's satire as Swift intended it to be understood. So you might be surprised that we're showing the movie in class and that I haven't required you to read Gulliver's Travels. Why?  The reason is that the archaic 18^th century English Swift uses is inaccessible to many contemporary readers, in particular ESL students.  However, I sometimes give students a brief portion of the text from the last adventure, in the Land of the Houyhnhnms (the philosopher horses), to give a sense of what reading Swift is like.  This is Part IV, chapters IV through VI  (pages 446-457 in  The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces). 

What you'll discover if you read these passages is that Lemuel Gulliver, the hero of the novel, is totally insane. He's not the sympathetic, misunderstood but intelligent hero Ted Danson portrays him to be at all. The Hollywood movie tries to convince you that Gulliver is wrongly believed to be crazy. But Gulliver as Swift portrays him truly is insane--quite hilariously so. The mere fact that he begins by calling a horse "my master" should tell you this, as should the fact that he chooses to sleep in the barn with horses rather than at home with his family.

The satire is hard to understand unless we correct our view of Gulliver's character. This is why the movie seems sort of pointless in places--simply weird for weirdness' sake. Because the Hollywood version insists on idealizing Gulliver as an unjustly persecuted wise man who knows the truth, we can only understand Swift's satire when Gulliver himself is not the object of it.  This is only the case when Gulliver really is smarter than the people around him. This is the case in Lilliput (Book One) and on the flying island of Laputa or at the Academy of Balnibari (Book Three). But what should we make of Book Two, Brobdingnag, when Gulliver is the fool and is clearly outclassed mentally and morally by the Brobdingnagian giants? And what about the inconvenient fact that our hero, this supposed model of sanity, winds up worshipping horses? Besides, even if worshipping horses seems okay in context, stop and think a little further. What about the fact that the horses he worships are smart but cruel?

Here's how Cliff's Notes suggests you see the situation and characters.

Assume that the bickering noblemen and petty officials of the courts of Lilliput are real English statesmen (and a real English king) of the 18^th century. The six-inch-high midgets are the "moral midgets"in the Court and Parliament of Swift's day. In Lilliput, Swift portrays them as being only six inches tall because this is a wonderful way to trivialize the significance of their wars, their political jousting, their endless infighting and backbiting over honors and awards.

But Swift believes Gulliver, who himself is a product of that kind of society, is incapable of moral perfection. In other words, there's a higher standard of moral behavior that Gulliver himself can't understand because he's never seen it. That standard is represented by the Brobdingnagians. Notice that they aren't merely big people who behave just like Englishmen. How are they different? Well, for starters, they have no war. They don't understand why anyone would consider gunpowder an achievement or sign of "progress." They live the Marxist ideal ("from each according to his means, to each according to his need"). But they need no government coercion to enforce this behavior. They make sure everyone has enough to eat because they would suffer themselves if they had to watch anyone go hungry. Like the Eldoradans in Candide, they also have no church authorities, though they all worship God.

The most famous line in Gulliver's Travels is actually uttered by the Queen of Brobdingnag, who says "It is plain that the English are the most odious race of vermin on earth." But this line is also funny. If she were exactly right, it wouldn't be funny. (Think about this.)

In the first and second books, Swift's criticism of English politics is easy to see. And in the third book, Swift's criticism of science and technology is equally easy to spot. It's more difficult than it should be to appreciate in the movie. But that's only because by that time, the movie has long since ceased to be as funny as Swift intended. Even the Struldbruggs, those who seek eternal life, are funny in the book rather than frightening, as they seem in the movie. (For starters, think about how helpless they are when they're threatening Gulliver.)

What may be hard to understand is the philosophical horses, whose story represents Swift's criticism of the Enlightenment philosophies of Rationalism and Deism (see page 290 of your textbook). Here's what Cliff's Notes says about them:

"The Houyhnhnms are super-reasonable. They have all the virtues that the stoics and the Deists advocated. They speak clearly, they act justly, and have simple laws. They do not quarrel or argue, since each knows what is true and right…But they are so reasonable that they have no emotions. They are untroubled by greed, politics, or lust. They act from undifferentiated benevolence. They would never prefer the welfare of one of their own children to the welfare of another Houyhnhnm simply on the basis of kinship.

"Very simply, the Houyhnhnms ARE horses; they are not humans.

"In contrast to the Houyhnhnms, Swift presents their precise opposite: the Yahoos, creatures who exhibit the essence of sensual human sinfulness. The Yahoos are not merely animals; they are animals who are naturally vicious…The Yahoos represent Mankind depraved.

"Midway between the poles of the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos, Swift places Gulliver. Gulliver is an average man, except that he has become irrational in his regard for reason.

"The aspiration to become a horse exposes Gulliver's grave weakness. Gullible and proud, he becomes such a devotee of reason that he cannot accept his fellow men who are less than totally reasonable. He cannot recognize virtue and charity when they exist…Gulliver hates his family because they look and smell like Yahoos.

"Swift discriminates among men as they are idealized, men as they are damned, men as they possibly could be, and men as they are. The Houyhnhnms embody the ideal of the rationalists and the stoics…(but) Swift…shows us that the super-reasonable horses are impossible and useless models for men. They have never fallen and therefore they have never been redeemed. They are incapable of the Christian virtues which unite passion and reason: neither they nor the Yahoos are touched by grace or charity. In contrast, the Christian virtues of Pedro de Mendez (the pirate captain who rescues Gulliver) and the Brobdingnagians are possible to men. These virtues are the result of grace and redemption."

Philosophically, Swift's thought closely resembles that of the nineteenth century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. More than a hundred years after Swift's death, Dostoevsky came to similar conclusions about modernity, especially when contrasted with the teachings of traditional Christianity.

But it's important to remember this: Although Swift and Dostoevsky both view Christianity as the antidote to modernity, you need not be a Christian to understand what upset these two men about the post-Enlightenment era of history. Neither man was convinced that technological advancement would always be progress. Neither man believed that mankind could decide for himself what happiness was, or how people ought to live. Neither was confident that the common man would vote wisely in political elections, or that common leaders would govern wisely or well. Neither thought that science alone could explain the fact of life itself or the mysteries of nature. And neither trusted a "democratic" future in which a man's human worth, or the worth of a store or farm or company, would be judged by the number of dollars in a bank account or the abstract figures of a stock report. Neither trusted a future in which some men could make money without working for it. Neither thought people should demand products that could only be made by destroying lands and animals they never saw. Both found modern life too complex, too abstract, and too divorced from nature and natural feelings.

Maybe the best way to see Gulliver's Travels is not so much as a practical joke, even though it was in fact written as a practical joke, as you'll see (below). Maybe we should see it instead as a one-way ticket to the Modern World.

1642: The English become the first European people to overthrow and execute their king, installing the Puritan religious party, led by Oliver Cromwell, in the monarchy's place.

1660: The Puritans quickly become more unpopular than any of the British kings, so they cause a civil war that ends with the monarchy restored under an Anglican king, Charles II.

1667: Jonathan Swift is born to an upper-class British family living in Dublin, Ireland. (Ireland was then a colony of England.) His father dies before he's born; his mother abandons him and returns to England. Swift is raised by a wealthy uncle.

Throughout the rest of the 1600s: Struggles take place all over Europe over succession to the European thrones. In England, the reigning Anglican Church and the royal house that represents it are challenged by the Catholic Stuarts. Reigning Anglican Tories and Whigs are also conscious of threats posed by the deposed Puritans, still active in politics, who think the Anglicans are just like the Catholics and hate both.

1689: Having been educated at Trinity College in Dublin, Swift is given a post as secretary to a noted Whig statesman, Sir William Temple. This enables him to live in England instead of Ireland, a situation he prefers and continues to seek (mostly without success) later in life.

1692: Swift receives an M.A. from Oxford University.

1695: Swift is ordained as a minister in the Anglican Church.

1700: Swift begins his career as a political journalist, writing in behalf of Whig and/or Tory causes.

1704: Swift publishes his first major satiric work, "A Tale of a Tub," defending a middle position in British politics. Around this time he also publishes "A Battle of the Books," in which he defends the classical works of authors like Virgil and Homer against recent literature which has not stood the test of time.

1710: Swift switches parties from the Whigs to the Tories. The Tories are in power in England at this time, and Swift's writings on their behalf earn him a place in the political spotlight. Around this time, Swift also lives in London and joins an "informal literary club" called the Martinus Scriblerus Club. It includes many of the leading writers and intellectuals of Swift's day. Cliff's Notes explains that the literary club "proposed to satirize the follies and vices of learned, scientific, and modern men," and assigned each member a topic to be used for that purpose. Swift's assignment was to "satirize the numerous and popular volumes describing voyages to faraway lands." Gulliver's Travels was the result, but it would not actually be published for another ten years.

1713: To Swift's disappointment, the fortunes of the Tories are in decline and he's given a post in Ireland as the Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Once there, he becomes a spokesman for the Irish poor and writes his famous essay "A Modest Proposal," in which he suggests solving the problem of Ireland's poverty by allowing the Irish to sell their toddlers to be butchered and sold to the English as a gourmet food.  Ever since it was first published, this essay has been anthologized and taught many times over as an example of the extraordinary emotional power that can be achieved by a brilliant satirist at the height of his literary powers. 

1742: Swift is declared mentally incompetent and hospitalized. However, there's no evidence that he was ever mentally incompetent before he became quite elderly. (At this time he's 76, a very advanced age for the 18^th century.)  Rather than being schizophrenic, as is sometimes thought, Swift was probably just suffering from senile dementia (the natural mental deterioration of old age). 

1745: Swift dies, leaving his estate to build "a house for fools and mad."  His hospital still exists in Dublin.