Introduction:-
Jonathan swift is the
greatest writer of the classical age by the force of his genius.
He was born in on the 30th
November 1667. At Trinity College, Dublin, swift was often at war
with the authorities, and he was not of a very studious turn of mind,
but he succeed in getting his degree in (1685) and he became one of
the Canons of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and wrote articles and
letters for the English Whigs. His words owe an exceptionally broad
scope to the freedom and penetration of its thought.
The
principal works of swift are,
·
Major satirical works
·
Correspondence
·
Pamphlets and Articles on English politics
·
Pamphlets on church questions
·
Pamphlets relating to
·
Poems
o
A Tale of a tub(1704)
o
The of the Books(1704)
o
Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
“Gulliver’s
Travels” is considered the masterpiece of swift and it is
undouabtly placed among the world classics. It is identified as a
political satire or political allegory by the critics.
An
allegory is a narrative in which the agents and action, and sometimes
the setting as well are contrived not only to make sense in
themselves, but also to signify a second, correlated order of
persons, thing, concepts, or events.
There are two main types:-
1.
Historical and political allegorical in which the characters and the
action represent, or “allegorize”, historical personages and
events, so in Dryden’s “Absalom and Achitophel” 1681).
2.
The allegory of ideas:-
In
which the characters represent abstruct concepts and the plot serves
to communicate a doctrine or thesis.
Gulliver’s
Travels as an allegory:-
“Gulliver’s
Travels” is an allegorical work. His allegory has been divided into
four sections refering to four voyages of the protagonist Gulliver.
England
in the Disguise of Liliput in part-1 of the Book:-
The
voyage to Liliput in part-1 of the book contains the story of
Gulliver’s shipwreck and his early adventures among the pigmies
The
Silken threads in Liliput symbolic of English distinction:-
Then there is the custom
in Liliput of awarding threads of green, red and blue colours to
those countries who showed the greatest agility in leaping over of
creeping under a stick.
The
allegorical meaning of the Empress’s annoyance with Gulliver:-
The
incident of Gulliver’s extinguishing a fire in the apartment of the
Lilliputian Empress relates to the circumstances in swift’s won
life. The Lilliputian Empress was filled with resentment at
Gulliver’s action in extinguishing the fire by urinating upon it.
The
political allegory in part-III
The
allegory of part-I seems to have been curried forward in part-III
into the reign of George I and to shadow forth the lamentable state
of affairs brought to pass by the Whigs.
Conclusion:-
‘Gulliver’s
Travels’ As ‘An Allegorical Satire’
This
means that does not attack personalities and institutions directly
but in a veiled manner for instance, in part -1 the portrayal of
Flimnap, the Treassurer in Liliput, is a satirical sketch of Sir
Robert Walpole who was the prime minister of England from 1715 to
1716 and then again from
No comments:
Post a Comment