SWIFT’S WORLD OF GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

In March 1726, Jonathan Swift rode into London carrying a manuscript that would become one of ?Western literature’s most enduring and incendiary fictions. The first volume of Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships known by the short title Gulliver’s Travels, Swift’s landmark satire has remained popular both for its scalding ridicule of the powerful and presumptuous, and for the settings it devised to stage these attacks. The title indicates that Gulliver’s “Travels” survey “Several Remote Nations”, domains that lie beyond the limits of British military conquest and mercantile empire. Gulliver’s Travels surveys wondrous lands that transform Gulliver himself into a source of wonder. Gulliver also describes British society throughout his journeys, with each rendition marking his growing alienation from his native culture.