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JONATHAN SWIFT AND THE SATIRICAL NOVEL
Jonathan Swift was born in 1667 and educated in Dublin. He left Ireland for England at the time of revolution in 1688. William Temple,a scholar and whig statesman encouraged him to write his first satirical works. 1708-1714: he was mainly in London where he made friends with other leading writers. 1713: he was made Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin where he remained for the next thirty yeas. 1726: he published his masterpiece , TRAVELS INTO SEVERAL REMOTE NATIONS OF THE WORLD,known as Gulliver’s Travels. 1729:A MODEST PROPOSAL , in which with irony and bitterness, Swift suggested that the poverty of the Irish people should be relieved by the sale of their children as food for the rich. Swift’s later years were marked by the decay of his mental faculties , labyrinthine vertigo and deafness. He died in 1745.
A CONTROVERSIAL WRITER
Swift has been labelled alternatively as a misanthrope, a monster or a lover of mankind, his attitude was conservative. It is also clear that he did not share the optimism of his age or the pride in England of his contemporaries. For Swift , reason is an instrument that must be used properly, too intensive use of reason is an error of judgement and therefore unreasonable, he insisted on the need to take a common-sense view of life. Swift found in irony and satire the means that suited his temperament and his interests. He usually achieved the effect of parody, combining ironic intent and simplicity of his style and his diction.
SATIRICAL NOVEL
Satire combines criticism with humor to comment on the current state of affairs. Satire is comedy with a purpose -- the purpose of pointing out absurdities in the world in a way that people will pay attention and possibly act on their knowledge. Satire can be highly influential on people and get them to change their minds on issues by learning about them from a comedic perspective.
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS (1721-1725)
Printed in London il 1726 but written in the years 1721-1725. it consists of four books, each dealing with the various adventures of the ship’s surgeon, Lemuel Gulliver.
THE STORY
In book 1 gulliver sails from bristol and after six months he is shipwrecked, somewhere in the south pacific. he is cast upon the shore of ‘LILLIPUT’, whose inhabitants, the lilliputians are only six inches tall. After many experiences he manages to return to England.
In book 2 gulliver sails for India, but finds himself in BROBDINGNAG a country swift located in Alaska. Here the native are giants twelve times as tall as Gulliver. He is kept in a cage but with a huge bird he was dropped in the middle of the ocean and rescued by a ship and returns to England.
In book 3 Gulliver’s ship is attacked by pirates who seat him adrift on a small boat. He finds himself on the flying island of LAPUTA, whose inhabitants are absent-minded , astronomers, philosophers and scientists who carry out absurd experiments.This island drops gulliver on japan and he manages to go back to England.
in book 4 Gulliver’s last voyage brings him to the island inhabited by the HOUYHNHNMS , rational horses that rule over the YAHOOS , a vile species of animal resembling human beings. when the horses banish him , he builds a canoe and leaves for England. Once back in civilization he joins his wife and children but cannot stand their human smell. He therefore goes to live in the stable , among the animals that remind him the nobility of the HOUYHNHNMS.
THE SOURCES
The traveller discovered some happy society where men lived a simple,uncorrupted life, following their natural instincts and the innate light of reason. From these utopias , the European man was seen as the victim of civilization. There are more general themes of moral satire :
-Book 1-man’s concern with unimportant matters and greed.
-Book 2- his pride.
-Book 3-the absurdities and evils of the various professions.
-Book 4-the representation of pure reason.
THE CHARACTER OF GULLIVER
Gulliver is middle-aged, well-educated , sensible and a careful observer. He differs from the typical traveller because the people he meets during his voyages are in no sense children of nature. They all live in highly organized societies and are governed by institutions. In the end he is disgusted by everything at home , it is because Europe is losing its civilization and falling into a state of corruption , expressed in the novel by the constant opposition between rationality and animality. Gulliver tells his experiences in the first person, in a prose style which is matter-of -fact and free of literary coloring. Gulliver is not Swift himself, he is an invented character, an object as much as an instrument of satire. Swift’s masterpiece can be read on different levels. it has been read as a tale for children , but it can also be read as a political allegory of Swift’s time, as a parody of voyage literature or as a masterpiece of misanthropy and a reflection on the aberrations of human reason.
AN AGE OF REVOLUTION
The last decades of the 18th century were marked by great revolutions : the agrarian and Industrial revolutions reshaped the social and political background of Britain, the British colonies became a new and free nation; and the french revolution spread ideas of freedom and equality all over Europe.
Britain changed from a mainly farming country into an industrial one, there was an increase in population ,which meant a greater demand for pots,beer and clothes. The industrial revolution implied new technologies and inventions, the development of the factory system, new sources of power and of transport. The most important inventions regarded machinery for cloth-making, as ‘spinning jenny’ and ‘water frame’. These machines allowed one man or woman to produce what had once required many workers. The power used to drive machinery came from water, but the need for more energy brought the development of steam power. WATT in 1775 patented an engine that was more powerful and wasted less fuel than its predecessors. The effect of watt’s invention led new factories to be built on the coal and iron fields of Lancashire. These new factories allowed Britain to manufacture cloth more cheaply than elsewhere, but also put many people out of work. The transport was made more efficient. New waterways were built and road conditions were improved. The Agrarian Revolution was connected to the industrial revolution because they both used technological inventions. The Agrarian Revolution took two principal forms:
-the widespread enclosure of open fields and common land to make larger, more efficient farms;
-improvements in the selective breeding of cattle to produce more meat, and in farming techniques such as crop rotation and mechanization.
INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
During the 18th century there was a shifting of population from the agricultural and commercial areas of the south to the north and the midlands, where new factories were built near the coal fields which provided them with fuel. Small towns called mushroom towns were constructed to house the workers. Women and children were increasingly employed because they could be paid
PROPHET
Blake was also very active in publishing prophetic books, in which he created a complex personal mythology and invented his own symbolic characters to reflect his social interests and denounce authority.THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL(1790) is a prose work, a mixture of aphorisms, anecdotes and proverbs, in which hell and satan represent liberty and energy, while heaven is the place of lawgiving. Desire and energy gain supremacy over restraint and reason.
COMPLEMENTARY OPPOSITES
Blake believed in the reality of a spiritual world but he thought that Christianity was responsible for the fragmentation of consciousness an the dualism characterising man’s life. So he had a vision made up of complementary opposites: good and evil, male and female, reason and imagination, cruelty and kindness. Without the contraries there is no progression.
IMAGINATION AND THE POET
Blake considered imagination as the means through which man can know the world. The poet therefore becomes a sort of prophet who can see more deeply into reality and who also tries to warn man of the evils of society
BLAKE’S INTEREST IN SOCIAL PROBLEMS
He supported the abolition of slavery and shared other intellectuals’ enthusiasm for the egalitarian principles which came to the fore during the French revolution. Disillusioned, he focused his attention on the evil consequences of the industrial revolution, the injustices caused by a materialistic attitude and the commercial exploitation of human beings. He sympathised with the victims of industrial society, such as children and prostitutes, as well as with the victims of oppression by institution,such as orphans and soldiers.
STYLE
Blake’s poems present very simple structure and a highly individual use of symbols. He employed a group of symbols : the child,the father and Christ, representing the states of innocence,experience and a higher innocence. His verse are linear and rhythmical, also uses frequently repetition.
