János Barcsák, Márta Pellérdi

English literature 1660-1900


Gulliver’s Travels

The full title of Swift’s most famous work is Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships. This long title unmistakably shows the connection between Swift’s book and the then popular travel narratives which characteristically bore such titles. The most popular travel story in the age was, of course, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe published in 1719, a year before Swift started work on the Travels, but there were several other narratives, too, built upon the conventions of realistic fiction established by Defoe, and in Gulliver’s Travels Swift clearly draws on this tradition. He tells a story that involves travelling, shipwrecks, and unknown islands; he chooses a hero who is remarkably similar to Robinson Crusoe in that he is a middle class man with a typical bourgeois mindset, rational and businessman-like; and presents the story in much the same form, using a first person singular narrator, a simple, clear style, detailed descriptions, and an objective, realistic tone. The obvious difference is of course that the actual content is not suited to this form of presentation: in the narrative delivered in the most factual and realistic style we hear about Lilliputians and giants, about flying islands and talking horses. In short, therefore, Swift parodies the fashionable form of the travel narrative, or we can even say that Gulliver’s Travels is mock-realistic fiction or a mock-novel: it juxtaposes the conventions, forms, techniques of realism with an emphatically unrealistic topic.

English literature 1660-1900

Tartalomjegyzék


Kiadó: Akadémiai Kiadó

Online megjelenés éve: 2018

ISBN: 978 963 454 261 2

A history of the English literature is presented here, with a scope on the years 1660 to 1900. The book is written in three main parts; beginning with the Restoration Period of the 17th century, followed by the first, and second halves of the 18th century. Thus, a sequential development of literary genres is presented, with explorations of the key figures and texts which drove these. The book also synthesises the historical, cultural and sociological background which gave rise to this literature, and allows the reader to effectively contextualise these.

Hivatkozás: https://mersz.hu/barcsak-pellerdi-english-literature-1660-1900//

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