Posts Tagged ‘Jonathan Swift’
Jonathan Swift – ” A Modest Proposal”
The full title reads A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public. In case you weren’t sure, this piece is literally dripping with satire. The “proposal” is meant to address the problems of poverty and hunger in Ireland. It’s not very long, so I recommend you read it or listen to it below. Swift’s famous satire still resonates as a response for those who claim “overpopulation” as the cause of starvation in developing countries.
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Jonathan Swift – Gulliver’s Travels
You can read the complete text of Gulliver’s Travels online . For GRE purposes, you can probably get by with knowing the major characters and themes. Here are some of the characters to get you started.
Gulliver - The narrator and protagonist of the story.
The Emperor of Lilliput – The ruler of Lilliput. Like all Lilliputians he is less than six inches tall, which makes his for the most part successful attempts to control Gulliver seem somewhat silly. He takes pride in the height of his tiny palace and his power over an army of tiny subjects, but despite its absurdity is power is still somewhat threatening. The emperor is a satire of the autocratic ruler and a well executed portrait of political power
The king of Brobdingnag - rational and intelligent, and speaks to Gulliver at length about the history and institutions of Gulliver’s native land. in this way he is similar to the Houyhnhnms.
Lord Munodi - A lord of Lagado, capital of the underdeveloped land beneath Laputa, who hosts Gulliver and gives him a tour of the country.
Yahoos - Gross humanlike beasts who serve the Houyhnhnms, who are extremely wise and intelligent horses. They are hairy, unintelligent and have extreme sexual appetites - basically an exaggerated version of everything bad about humanity.
Houyhnhnms - Rational horses who live in a simple, peaceful socialist republic governed by reason and honesty. They do not even have a word for “lie” in their language.
Don Pedro de Mendez - The Portuguese captain who takes Gulliver back to Europe after he is forced to leave the land of the Houyhnhnms. Don Pedro is kind to Gulliver, but Gulliver at this point cannot stand the company of “Yahoos”.
Brobdingnagians - Giants whom Gulliver meets on his second voyage. Brobdingnagians are basically a reasonable and kindly people governed by a sense of justice.
The farmer - Gulliver’s first master in Brobdingnag, where all of the people are giants. He is kind to Gulliver, but puts him on display around Brobdingnag in an attempt to profit from him. The farmer represents the average man, yet one who is powerful only because of his immense size and physical strength.
Glumdalclitch - The farmer’s nine-year-old daughter, who becomes Gulliver’s friend and cares for him as a kind of dull or pet.
Lilliputians and Blefuscudians - Two warring races of miniature people whom Gulliver meets on his first voyage.
Laputans - Absentminded intellectuals who live on the floating island of Laputa, encountered by Gulliver on his third voyage. They are parodies of theoreticians, impractical, self-absorbed and judgmental of those who are less intelligent than themselves. the Laputans serve as a warning against the excesses of theoretical pursuits and the uselessness of purely abstract knowledge.
Richard Sympson - Gulliver’s cousin, friend, and the editor and publisher of Gulliver’s Travels.
Here’s the 1st chapter. Get the rest by clicking .
Jonathan Swift – (1667-1745)
from Wikipedia:
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish[1] satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin.
He is remembered for works such as Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier’s Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms — such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier — or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire: the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.”
That’s well worded enough – brief and to the point. Swift was an interesting character. You can read the rest of the wiki bio .
If you haven’t already read “Gulliver’s Travels” and are trying to cram, listening to a few chapters and memorizing the characters should be all you need to get by on the GRE. If you are on a board of admissions, please phase out this test so I never have to write statements like that again.