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A Consideration Of The Criticism Of Swift'S 'Gulliver'S Travels,' 1890 To1960

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A Consideration Of The Criticism Of Swift'S 'Gulliver'S Travels,' 1890 To1960

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Content T his d isserta tio n has been 65— 3110
m icro film ed exactly as receiv ed
K IEFFER, E velyn Thom pson, 1919—
A CONSIDERATION OF THE CRITICISM OF
SW IFT'S GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, 1890 TO 1960.
U n iv ersity of Southern C alifornia, P h .D ., 1964
Language and L iteratu re, gen eral
U niversity Microfilms, Inc., A nn Arbor, M ichigan
Copyright by
Evelyn Thompson Kieffer
1965
A CONSIDERATION OF THE CRITICISM OF SWIFT'S
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. 1890 TO 1960
by
Evelyn Thompson Kieffer
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF TOE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
August 1964
UNIVERSITY O F S O U T H E R N C A L IFO R N IA
G R A D U A T E S C H O O L
U N IV E R S IT Y PA R K
L O S A N G E L E S 7 , C A L IF O R N IA
This dissertation, written by
............... -Ey.ely;n..TJbiQm.psoxi.KxfefjLej:..................
under the direction of hsx....Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by the Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements
for the degree of
D O C T O R OF P H I L O S O P H Y
Dean
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairman
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND ................... 1
II. TEXTUAL AND SOURCE STUDIES................... 25
The Texts
Source Studies
III. PSYCHOLOGICAL CRITICISM........................ 123
IV. GULLIVER AND THE HISTORY OF IDEAS.............. 155
Political Thought
Scientific Thought
Philosophical and Religious Thought
V. GULLIVER AND AESTHETIC CRITICISM............. 238
The Clear Style and the Realistic Method
Satire, Allegory, and Irony
The Role of Gulliver
The Unity of Gulliver
Gulliver as Tragedy or Comedy
VI. CONCLUSION.................................... 314
BIBLIOGRA P H Y ........................................ 324
ii
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
In 1936 the distinguished Swiftian Ricardo
Quintana offered the following challenge:
An inclusive survey of the critical assess
ments of Gulliver1s Travels from the time of
Swift's death down to the present would throw a
great deal of light upon the formation of stand
ard attitudes towards well-known works of art and
the manner in which these attitudes are perpetu
ated. *
Five years later, in an abbreviated reworking of a doctoral
dissertation completed at Princeton University in 1937,
Donald Berwick referred to Quintana's challenge, but ques
tioned the possibility of a survey of Swift criticism deal
ing only with the works, let alone a single work, on the
grounds that many critics "have been unable to see the
writings for the man behind them." Berwick, therefore,
^The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift (New York,
1936), p. 306.
^The Reputation of Jonathan Swift, 1781-1882
(Philadelphia, 1941), p. 1.
1
set as his task a survey of the criticism of Swift's works
including "such biographical discussion as seems to have
affected literary judgment" (p. 2). He limited his dis
cussion to a century--from the publication in 1781 of
Johnson's Lives of the English Poets to 1882, the date of
Craik's biography of Swift.
Writing in the same year as Berwick's published
dissertation, 1941, Merrel Clubb took an entirely differ
ent point of view. To Clubb it had become apparent that
"the interpretation and verdict to be placed on the 'Voyage
to the Houyhnhnms' is, after all, the central problem of
Swift criticism."'* Clubb, therefore, proceeded to a survey
of "The Criticism of Gulliver's 'Voyage to the Houyhnhnms,'
1726-1914."
The purposes and point of view of the dissertation
lie midway between these two poles. Although Berwick
appears partially justified in recoiling from the diffi
culty involved in any attempt to separate judgments of
Gulliver's Travels and judgments of Jonathan Swift in the
criticism appearing between 1781-1882, times have changed.
3
"The Criticism of Gulliver's 'Voyage to the
Houyhnhnms,' 1726-1914," Stamford Studies in Language and
Literature (California, 1941>, pp. 206-207.
3
Even in 1936 Quintana could say:
To-day the historical approach to Swift and
his times has quite destroyed the violent emotions
and prepossessions which formerly characterized so
much of the criticism of Gulliver's Travels, and
with a fuller understanding of the intellectual
and literary background of the work has come a
calmer appraisal of Swift's doctrines and art.
(Mind and Art. p. 306)
On the other hand, while much critical interest
has centered upon the "Voyage to the Houyhnhnms," Clubb's
limitation necessarily omits numerous textual and source
studies, interpretations of Swift's views in relation to
eighteenth century thought, and aesthetic analyses of
Gulliver's Travels as a unified artistic whole. Since
these are important tendencies, even trends, in the devel
opment of Swiftian criticism, it seems necessary to broaden
the scope of Clubb*s concern if one is to achieve an ade
quate view of the evolution of this criticism. However, to
broaden the scope to include the whole corpus of Swift
would be to dilute the evidence and risk superficiality of
treatment. Thus, while extensive studies have value, this
dissertation will be limited to an intensive study of the
criticism of a single, but representative, work--Gulliver's
Travels. As in the analyses by Berwick and Clubb, the
present discussion is limited to criticism by Brish and
American writers. The period selected begins with 1890,
approximately a decade after the period covered by Berwick,
and extends to 1960, some forty-six years later than the
period covered by Clubb. This particular span includes
much which is reminiscent of the older concepts reviewed
by Berwick and Clubb, but it also covers a variety of new
approaches characteristic of the twentieth century.
It is the purpose of this chapter to present as
background some of the earlier critical perspectives re
viewed by Berwick and Clubb and to glance at a few other
attempts to summarize critical developments in connection
with Gulliver's Travels.
The work of Berwick and Clubb involves considerable
duplication, for, as Berwick observes, from the time of
Samuel Johnson (1781) to the work of Scott (1814) "discus
sion of Gulliver was concentrated upon the fourth voyage as
a specimen of misanthrophy, either salutary or vicious in
effect according to the bent of the commentator" (p. 71),
and while this emphasis diminishes in the later periods, it
does not completely disappear. Moreover, Berwick intro
duces his study of the period 1781 to 1882 by giving a
brief survey of criticism previous to 1781, another era in
which the critical emphasis— an emphasis largely subservi-
5
ent to biography--was also emphatically upon Book IV.
Clubb*s account is a rather loosely developed series of
brief comments and extensive quotations arranged in chron
ological order. He does, however, contribute an effective
center for reviewing his somewhat heterogeneous raw mater
ial by suggesting six objections or misunderstandings which
form the basis of most hostile criticism:
. . . first, sweeping condemnation of the
**Voyage," as a libel hurled against human nature,
and, often, as a sacrilege committed against God;
second, and almost always in combination with any
form of the first, unqualified, or only clumsily
qualified, identification of the Houyhnhnms and
the Yahoos with the actual zoological genera homo
and equus. and of Gulliver with Swift; third, the
inference that in writing Part IV, a personally
disappointed, gloomy, morose, mentally unhealthy,
or even maniacally insane man, was paying off old
scores; fourth, dissatisfaction with the Houyhnhnms,
as anything but the "perfection of nature," implied
in Swift's etymological explanation of the proper
noun; fifth, repugnance to the filth and violence
of some sections of the book, and total or rela
tive misunderstanding of the intentions and methods
of Swift' 8 humor; and sixth, the verdicts of
failure as narrative, inconsistency as allegory,
and moral ineffectiveness or unwholesomeness as
satire, (pp. 212-213)
Although Berwick's survey of the criticism of
Gulliver is rather sketchy, because it is such a small part
of his total plan, it is less sketchy than Clubb's, and
will form the basis of the brief summary of criticism
which follows.
Berwick* 8 adamant stand against the possibility of
separating the criticism of Swift's works from his life
contrasts ironically with the division of his dissertation
into four chronological periods, each containing three
completely separate subdivisions entitled "Swift the Man,"
"The Works," and "Swift the Writer."
Only in the brief introductory survey of criticism
before 1781 does Berwick attempt a unified treatment of his
material. Here he dismisses the memoirs of Mrs. Letitia
Pilkington as scarcely criticism and begins, as do most
literary historians, including Clubb, with the Earl of
Orrery's Remarks. published in 1751. Berwick records
Orrery's violent disapproval of Swift as a man, but admits,
"Toward the works his attitude is mixed" (p. 5). Of
Orrery's views concerning Gulliver. Berwick says, "The work
remains, to his mind, a moral-political romance of delight
ful imagination and wlt--but of over-venomous and splenetic
satire" (p. 6 ), and is further marred in the first two voy
ages by too much dwelling upon "'optical deceptions'" (p.
6 ) leading to astonishment rather than moral improvement,
and in the fourth voyage by "'a misanthropy that is intol
erable'" (p. 6 ). For Orrery, disgust replaces entertain
ment, instruction is lost in shock, and mankind is
7
insulted. Since Orrery believes an insult to mankind is an
insult to God as Creator, Berwick concludes, "As the self-
appointed champion of God, Orrery expends much energy in
vindicating human nature and proclaiming it good" (p. 6 ),
and dismisses Swift's picture of the Houyhnhnms as '"cold
and insipid1" and his painting of the Yahoos with the com
ment: "'he becomes one himself.'"^
Patrick Delany, the next critic reviewed by Berwick,
wrote his Observations upon Lord Orrery's Remarks (1754) as
a vindication of Swift the man against some of Orrery's
severe judgments. But Delany's treatment of Gulliver is
that of a moralist who completes Orrery's demolition of
Book IV. Thus, all who have subsequently been shocked by
the indecencies of Gulliver may trace their lineage to
Delany's Observations even more surely than to Orrery's
Remarks.
The third and final biographer-critic who may be
said to have known Swift personally is Deane Swift, a some
what paradoxical figure who attacked both his predecessors
in his Essay upon the Life. Writings, and Character of Dr.
^John Earl of Orrery, Remarks on the Life and Writ
ings of Dr. Jonathan Swift (London, 1752), p. 188. Cited
in Berwick, p. 7.
Jonathan Swift (1755). Berwick calls him a "culminating
specimen of eccentricity" in a family "not notable for its
mental balance" (p. 1 0 ) and a critic full of perverse and
even self-contradictory categorical statements exhibited
particularly in his passion to save the Swift family repu
tation. Yet he also calls him a critic possessing "uncanny
heights of perception," and often showing "remarkable
understanding of Swift's genius," particularly in his
analysis of the works.^ Dean Swift's discussion of Gulli
ver is cited as exemplary support of his perceptions, for
he, unlike Orrery and Delany, saw Jonathan Swift's central
purpose of satirizing folly and corruption in all areas of
life and supported the severity of his attack upon imper
sonal vice, believing that the shocking brutality of the
Yahoos is '" likely to enforce the obligation of religion
and virtue upon the souls of men,'"^ and that those who
censure the fourth voyage merely show themselves as de
praved Yahoos.
^Berwick, p. 12. Leslie Stephen, Swift (London,
1903), disagrees, saying, "His [Deane Swift ' s] book is
foolish and discursive." p. v.
c .
Deane Swift, p. 225. Cited in Berwick, p. 13.
9
Berwick concludes his preliminaries with recognition
that almost all the biographical problems confronting stu
dents of Swift were touched upon in the works of these
first three men and their lesser contemporaries, including
Hawkesworth's "Life of Swift," prefaced to his edition of
the Works in 1765 and W. W. Dilworth's Life of Jonathan
Swift (1758), neither of which added anything to previous
discussion. Perhaps most surprising is Berwick's admis
sion :
Criticism of the works did not always, as we have seen,
depend upon judgments of the man. Delany's harsh stric
tures of Gulliver' 8 Travels accord poorly with his
defense of Swift as a person. But in general we find
little attempt at impartiality. Again, it remained for
later generations to create, as it were, a bifurcation
between the man and his art. (p. 15)
In his analysis of the criticism of Gulliver between
1781 and 1814, Part I of the body of his dissertation,
Berwick records the views of James Harris in Philosophical
Inquiries (London, 1781), James Beattie in Dissertations
Moral and Critical (London, 1783), Thomas Sheridan in Life
of Dr. Swift (London, 1801), George Monck Berkeley in
Literary Relics . . . To which is prefaced, an Inquiry into
the Life of Dean Swift (London, 1789), and Nathan Drake in
Essays, vol. Ill (London, 1805), plus brief comments from
William Godwin and Dr. Johnson. Here Berwick states that,
10
in general, critics in all periods ’’ tend to enjoy the first
two voyages, to be bored by the third, and to turn again
and again in anguish to the fourth, fascinated by its very
repulsiveness" (pt38). Their reasons, particularly for their
reactions to the fourth voyage "remain consonant with the
unique standards of the period" (p.38). Since the closing
years of the eighteenth century were marked by high concern
for morality, only two men were eager to defend Gulliver,
namely, Thomas Sheridan and George Berkeley. Others, like
Harris and Beattie, found inconsistencies in the portraits
of the Yahoos (men made beasts) and the Houyhnhnms (horses
made patterns of virtue without benefit of religion) and
were repelled by Swift's debasement of human nature which
they like Orrery before them linked to disrespect for
Providence. With monotonous consistency critics of the
period recoil from what they presume to be Swift's filth
and irreligion. Berwick, however, praises one anonymous
response which strikes a new note, a note which suggests
the aesthetic concerns of much more modern critics: "'It is
not decent thus to expose wantonly the nakedness of our
parents; nay, the disgust the representation inspires,
11
silently destroys its force.'"^
But the first real defense comes from Sheridan, who
argues against identification of the Yahoo with man and
purposes that the former has been created to represent the
animal capacity of man and to underscore the necessity of
maintaining the essential superiority of reason. Although,
as Berwick points out, Sheridan in his argument merely
counters didacticism with didacticism, he, and Monck Berke
ley as well, does credit Swift with distinguishing between
virtue and vice in man and fulminating only at the latter.®
Johnson's only contributions to the criticism of
Gulliver during this period are (1) his famous comment
recorded by Boswell: "When once you have thought of big and
little men, it is very easy to do all the rest"; (2 ) his
admission of "very great merit to the inventory of articles
found in the pocket of the Han Mountain, particularly the
description of his watch"; and (3) a curt statement in
the Life:
^Analytic Review (May, 1789), pp. 77-78. Quoted in
Berwick, p. 40.
o
Clubb would add Sheridan's contribution in "summing
up the causal connection between the Yahoos and Swift's
stigma of misanthropy" (p. 217).
12
Criticism was for a while lost in wonder: no rules of
judgement were applied to a book written in open defi
ance of truth and regularity. But when distinctions
came to be made the part which gave least pleasure was
that which describes the Flying Island, and that vfclch
gave most disgust must be the history of the Houyhn
hnms. 9
Berwick concludes that in the period from Johnson to
Scott only Swift's style comes in for universal praise, and
even here Godwin and Sheridan worried about his grammar
(p. 44). Clubb, on the other hand, concludes his picture
of this era on a more optimistic note, citing from William
Godwin the following summation of some contemporary views:
It has been doubted whether, under the name of Houyhn
hnms and Yahoos, Swift has done anything more than ex
hibit two different descriptions of men, in their highest
improvement and lowest degradation; and it has been af
firmed that no book breathes more strongly a generous
indignation against vice, and an ardent love of every
thing that is excellent and honourable to the human
heart. (Clubb, p. 219)
On the whole, however, Clubb does not find nineteenth
century views so favorable. Looking at "the deluge of the
years 1800-1914*'as a unit, he divides critics into attack
ers and defenders of the "Voyage to the Houyhnhnms." The
defenders occupy only a brief two pages (pp. 219-232).
9Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, ed. G.
B. Hill, V (Oxford, 1905), 38. Quoted in Berwick, p. 43.
Meanwhile, Berwick views the early period of 1814-
1841 as an era somewhat favorable to Swift. He sees the
development of the nineteenth century picture of Swift as
a paradox and intimates that this emphasis upon such dual
ities as benevolence vs. misanthropy, piety vs. indecency
or scoffing, inevitably lightened some of the criticisms
(pp. 51-52). In keeping with this new tone, Berwick finds
Scott "has completely succumbed to the charm of Gulliver
with the sole exception of the fourth voyage" (p. 74).
In the fourth book, though he grants a moral purpose to
the use of the Yahoos, Scott still questions whether it
justifies "'the nakedness with which Swift has sketched
this horrible outline of mankind degraded to a bestial
state,'"*0 3 3^ xike Delany and Beatie objects to the im
probabilities of the Houyhnhnms. But Scott's notion that
after the first improbability, the fable never once loses
its air of truth, is carried through the years by other
critics. Previous trends continue but with less emphasis,
and Scott's successors in the period tend less and less to
decry the validity of the Yahoos, though still finding them
^®Sir Walter Scott, Memoirs. p. 338. Quoted in
Berwick, p. 71.
14
repulsive. Hazlitt praises Swift's moral lesson as well
as the Intellectual amusement created by his '"attempt to
tear off the mask of imposture from the world” rather than
"to cant morality” or "to write unmeaning panegyrics on
mankind'' Hazlitt cannot "'see the harm, the misan-
1 9
thropy, the immoral and degrading tendency of this."
Nor can William Monck Mason, who, according to Berwick,
offers the strongest defense of Swift in the first part of
the nineteenth century, a defense founded upon a careful
scholarship which is unique in a period almost totally
impressionistic in its criticism (pp. 57, 59). Indeed,
Berwick proposes that in many respects Gulliver comes into
its own during this period. More attention is paid to
praise of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, to favorable comparison
with Defoe, and to Swift's admirable finesse in the appli
cation of conceptions of size so as to preserve the illu
sion of reality (pp. 7A-76). Laputa was less favorably
commented upon, but as Berwick points out:
. . . its overdrawn satire, its lack of a centralizing
theme, its tendency to ridicule phases of science of which
the Dean had but slight knowledge— all these come in for
^Quoted in Berwick, p. 72.
12
Quoted in Berwick, p. 72.
15
their share of criticism from most of the early nine**
teenth-century writers; and there has, in fact, been
little change in critical opinion from 1726 to the
present day. (p. 76)
To Berwick the high water mark of this second period is
the publication in 1840 of W. C. Taylor's edition. He
notes particularly Taylor's recognition of the artistic
merits of Swift's subordination of allegory to an inter
nally consistent narrative (p. 77).
This broadening of critical concern to Include praise
of the first two books probably accounts for the major
divergences between Clubb and Berwick. Even today,
criticism of Book IV does not always deal sympathetically
with Clubb's six critical foci.^ Concerned only with
Book IV, Clubb naturally collects the negative remarks of
Scott, ignoring the praise of other sections, and he finds
William Monck Mason "strangely inconsistent" (p. 222).
Berwick, on the other hand, has no apparent difficulty in
reconciling Mason's admiration for the wide appeal of
Gulliver, for its verisimilitude, and for its consummate
irony, with his distaste for the degradation of mankind and
other disagreeable features of Book IV (p. 82). He simply
l^see above, page 5.
16
believes that Mason did not find Gulliver all of a piece.
Berwick also records Mason's admiration of Swift's ability
In the earlier books to clothe "with an air of probability
the most Improbable fictions," and his defense of Swift's
somewhat different method In Book IV:
. . . can we reasonably deny to Swift the same privi
leges which have been allowed to all fablers, from Aesop,
down to his contemporary, Gay: that of conveying a use
ful moral under the mask of an Improbable fiction?14
As a whole, Berwick finds the period, 1814-1840, one
in \rtiich men, vrtiatever their allegiance to the concept of
Swift, the biographical monster, were admitting the power
of his genius as a man of letters. An important cleavage
between legend and literary criticism had been made.
Fart III of Berwick's study, covering the period 1841
to 1865, traces the continuation of Swift the monster,
modified to a degree by a rather sentimental Victorian
compassion and pity or the more or less scientific consid
erations of his insanity and its physiological cause set
down in W. R. Wilde's study, The Closing Years of Dean
Swift's Life. Both tendencies forecast the corpus of
^History of the Antiquities of the Collegiate and
Cathedral Church of St. Patrick (Dublin, 1820), p. 360,
note n. Quoted in Berwick, p. 76.
17
psychological criticism directly related to Swift's writing
which appeared in the twentieth century. Actually, Berwick
finds that the preoccupation during this period with the
personality of Swift and with general discourses upon his
genius precludes any intensive criticism of individual
works, "and so the years from 1840 to 1865 brought forth
virtually nothing in the way of new criticism of Gulliver"
(p. 108). Roscoe and Waller brought out new editions but
no new criticism. David Masson (1859) took a rather typi
cal, unseemly delight in the reduction of Gulliver to
schoolboy fare, and Thackeray (1851) merely put in pecu
liarly memorable form the old charges against Book IV:
"filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging,
obscene," having little purpose other than to show "that
man is utterly wicked, desperate, and imbecile, and his
passions are so monstrous, and his boasted powers so mean,
that he is and deserves to be the slave of brutes, and
ignorance is better than his vaunted reason."^ The
defenders, including DeQuincey, raised their voices chiefly
in praise of the power— the fierce and terrible poetic
^William Makepeace Thackeray, The English Humorists
of the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1899), p. 447. Quoted
in Berwick, p. 110.
18
effect of Gulliver (Berwick, pp. 110-111). Thus, as Ber
wick says, "The age of Thackeray, peculiarly rich in
invidious criticism of the man, seems to have displayed a
remarkable apathy toward his writings" (p. 113), though
there is a plethora of generalizations about his art.
In Part IV, dealing with the period 1865-1882, Ber
wick halls the advent of "a new, clearer thinking age,"
less prejudiced and sentimental, making "decisions after,
and not before, studying the facts ..." (p. 1 2 0 ), and
"reconsidering long-established judgments" (p. 122). Un
fortunately the great work of John Foster carried Swift's
story no further than the year 1711, and so contributed
nothing to the study of Gulliver. However, Leslie Stephen's
Swift (London, 1882) and Henry Craik's The Life of Jonathan
Swift (London, 1882) did consider Gulliver. Stephen, after
paying his respects to the usual views--the charm of the
story, its verisimilitude, the force of the satire, the re
versal of the telescope in the first two voyages, the
observance of exact proportions, the inferiority of the
third voyage, and the libelous quality of the fourth--
emphasizes Swift's creation of delightful characters and
the evident good humor of the first two voyages. Even more
significantly, Berwick suggests that Stephen finds Swift
19
no moralist but a man displaying his contempt for the
world through an allegory containing "a number of exceed
ingly effective symbols for the utterance of his contempt."*^
Admittedly, the voyage to the Houyhnhnms and the depiction
of the hideous Struldbrugs are the portions most oppressive
in their misanthropy, a misanthropy which Stephen would
understand rather than explain away.
Craik similarly finds much good humor in the Voyage
to Lilliput, some increase of bitterness in the contempt
for human pettiness and triviality in the second voyage,
and much more in the final two voyages, where Swift is less
concerned with precise construction and delicate satiric
touches than with direct and coarse, though certainly still
powerful, expression of sheer hatred. Gulliver, says
Craik, "strips off the trappings and disguises with which
we deceive ourselves and leaves us face to face with the
17
stem realities of our nature and our lot." In a rather
original twist, Craik suggests further that the portrait
of the Houyhnhnms may be simply:
^Stephen, p. 176. Quoted in Berwick, p. 150.
^Craik, p. 391. Quoted in Berwick, p. 151.
t
20
. . . another ply of the satire on humanity, those
best Ideals could be attained only by eliminating all
that made life worth living, but whose passions and
emotions, when ripened to full maturity, ended only In
the loathsomeness of the Yahoo?18
Berwick ends his survey confident that Swift criti-
clsm has, by 1882, come of age. The chief mark of its
maturity is the concept that the man himself can best be
known through what he has written. Clubb disagrees.
Recalling Quintana's observation that the Victorian biog
raphers prepared the way "for dispassionate and independent
study of the satire of Gulliver's Travels." Clubb comments:
Yet upon perusal, their critiques of the fourth "Voy
age," taken by themselves, do not in the least "disar
range the critical patterns inherited from the eighteenth
century." In fact, in some of them, one sees the trend
toward an even more consciously and rigidly literalistic
attitude toward the allegory which carries well over
into the twentieth century. (pp. 224-225)
Clubb finds even Craik still dependent upon the "conven
tionally-accepted personal factors: uncongenial surround
ings, a spirit envenomed by keen struggle, the impending
loss of Stella, and the shadow of a clouded intellect"
(p. 225), to explain the disgust and gloom of Book IV.
With the year 1882 Berwick concludes his official
survey. Clubb continues until 1914, but with a rather
*®Craik, p. 391. Quoted in Berwick, p. 151
21
unprofitable brevity. Collins is said to paraphrase
Harris*8 formula of distaste for the man-animal reversals
(p. 225); Gerald P. Moriarty is accounted equally literal;
W. E. H. Lecky and G. A. Aitken are accorded space for
quotations 'which reduce Book IV to '"a counsel of de
spair'" or a work which "'only a cynic or a misanthrope
. . . will find . . . convincing'" (p. 227). The section
ends in a confused kaleidoscope of attacks by Vida Scudder,
Lafcadio Heame, Prosser Hall Frye, and a sprinkling of
writers of textbooks and encyclopaedia articles. Then in a
sudden reversal of outlook, Clubb announces that since
1914 "the numbers of offensive and defensive sallies in
print are approaching equality" (p. 229). As the represen
tation forerunners of this happy day, Clubb selects Henry
Morley, Cecil Headlam, Sophie Shilleto Smith, R. D. O'
Leary, and Sir Charles Whibley (pp. 230-232).
In this brief review of the criticism of criticism,
three short surveys of more recent Swift criticism remain
to be noted. In 1938 two articles appeared: "Recent Stud
ies of Swift: A Survey" by Herbert Davis, and "Methods in
Books about Swift" by George Sherbum. In 1940 Ricardo
QUintana added an account of "Recent Discussions of Swift."
Since these are undifferentiated considerations of Swift
22
biography, criticism, and textual studies as a whole, they
offer little direct background to the present study,
though each adds a few pertinent suggestions.
Herbert Davis regrets the biographical preoccupation
of the scholars of the 1930's, a situation reminiscent of
earlier criticism, and questions vdiether these scholars
might not better begin with literary and philological
study, using other studies only as aids to full understand
ing and interpretation. He turns to European scholars for
contrast and points out several specific German treatments
of Gulliver as literature. Davis does, however, note with
pleasure the work of W, H. Bonner, Captain William Dampier
Buccaneer, the Mohler-Nicholson scientific investigations
of the "Voyage to Laputa," and W. A. Eddy's edition of
Gulliver.^
George Sherburn pleads for critics who will recog
nize, particularly in connection with Gulliver, the impor
tance of Swift's playfulness of mind and his role in the
Enlightenment, and who will relate historical and philo-
^ • %nlversitv of Toronto Quarterly. VII (1938), 273-
288.
23
sophical background effectively to textual s t u d i e s .
Quintana speaks with great optimism of the develop
ments in Swift criticism as a whole:
If there are aspects of Swift that still defy analysis,
he is generally better understood today--as a man, as
a public character, as an artist— than perhaps at any
time since the earlier eighteenth century.21
The key to Swift, particularly to Book IV, Quintana feels,
is no longer neurosis but magnificent craftsmanship. Fur
ther, he believes that "to place Swift in the context is
now the concern of many scholars interested in the history
of ideas" (p. 14). Quintana, thus, appears to be describ
ing as fait accompli what George Sherbum was pleading for
just two years earlier.
In the chapters to come the purpose will be to trace
the developments in the criticism of Gulliver from 1890 to
1960. If twentieth century criticism of Gulliver is looked
at chronologically, certain trends are inmediately appar
ent. The concern for textual and source studies was strong
est between 1920 and 1940. Psychological criticism began
in the late twenties and continued through the fifties, but
^Studies in Philology. XXXV (October 1938), 244-246,
655.
^^College English. II (October 1940), 12.
24
objections to its nonliterary nature were numerous after
1945. The Interest in the relation between literature and
the history of ideas began about 1935 and has continued to
the present, though from 1945 through 1960 the criticism
of aesthetic values has become increasingly important. In
the light of this chronological pattern, the following
chapter divisions have been made. Chapter II will deal
with developments in textual and source studies, Chapter
III with findings in the area of psychological or psycho
analytical criticism, Chapter IV with the many studies
concerned with the moral and social implications of
Gulliver's Travels and its relation to the history of
ideas, and Chapter V with the studies emphasizing aesthetic
considerations. Chapter VI will essay a final summary and
some conclusions concerning the developing corpus of crit
icism devoted to Gulliver.
CHAPTER II
TEXTUAL AND SOURCE STUDIES
The Texts
Since within the related areas of textual and source
studies twentieth century critics have had a number of
concerns, this chapter will contain several subdivisions.
Textual criticism will be subdivided into critical consid
erations of (1) the Motte vs. Faulkner editions, (2) the
geographical and chronological errors in the text, and
(3) the date of composition of various portions of the text.
The source studies to be reviewed will be (1) literary,
(2) political, and (3) linguistic.
Although there are no absolute chronological demarca
tions among these concerns, approximate dates may be
assigned. The shifting of critical preference from the
Motte editions to the Faulkner edition occurred in the late
twenties and early thirties. The geographical and chrono
logical errors in the text of Gulliver were given little
25
attention until 1940. The dates of composition of the var
ious parts of Gulliver were established about 1935, although
it was not until the forties and fifties that the dates and
their implications were fully accepted. The major twenti
eth century contribution in the field of literary sources
was published in 1923; while the two major contributions
to political sources appeared in 1919 and 1945, and the
major linguistic interest arose in the fifties. Thus, the
survey of critical accomplishments presented in this chap
ter is developed in terms of chronologically oriented trends
in the twentieth century.
The Editions
Though many of the problems concerning the background
of Gulliver's Travels--particularly its sources— have been
of continuing interest to critics, concern for textual
accuracy suffered a strange lapse between the mid-eighteenth
century Hawkesworth edition and that of G. Ravenscroft
Dennis at the beginning of the twentieth. This lack of
precise textual concern among nineteenth century editors is
particularly curious in the light of the eighteenth century
disputes over the text. The nineteenth century was quite
aware of Swift's complaints about the textual liberties
27
taken by the first publisher of Gulliver. the London
printer Motte; of Motte's numerous editions with variant
corrections and additions; of Faulkner's issuance of a
Dublin edition in 1735, and of the subsequent rivalry
between Motte's successor Bathhurst and Faulkner, the
former being assisted in his claims to greater authenticity
of text by Hawkesworth, who edited the great 1755 quarto
edition of the Works. Yet critics did not systematically
concern themselves with the nature, the sequence, the
interrelationships, or the relative value of these texts
until the twentieth century.
With understandable pride, G. Ravenscroft Dennis
introduced his text of Gulliver (1899) as "the result of
careful collation of all early editions."* He included the
numerous alterations and additions made at Swift's sugges
tion by his friend Ford, though the variation in the early
editions is, Dennis admits, "so considerable, rather in
quantity than quality, that it was impossible to give
every reading in the notes" (p. vii). Dennis also endeav
ored to establish some order in that most complex of areas,
*The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Temple
Scott, VIII (London, 1899), vii.
28
9
the bibliography of the variant editions of Gulliver. It
was not, however, until the work of an American geologist,
Lucius L. Hubbard, of the University of Michigan, that a
thorough line by line, word for word comparison of the
early editions was made. Hubbard's study was published in
1922 as Contributions toward a Bibliography of Gulliver's
Travels to Establish the Number and Order of Issue of the
Motte Editions of 1726 and 1727. In 1925 Harold Williams
3
added a close study of the Motte editions. He was fol
lowed by Teerink, who, in 1937, published A Bibliography of
the Writings in Prose and Verse of Jonathan Swift. P.P..
and by Arthur E. Case, whose edition of Gulliver appeared
2
*Page xxxi. In this, he had little help from pre
decessors, as may be seen in Harold Williams' summary of
the state of bibliographical scholarship concerning the
Motte editions presented in "Motte Editions of Gulliver's
Travels." Library. Fourth Series, VI (December 1925), 233.
In 1872 a correspondent [in Notes and Queries 1 noted two
editions published in 1726, one separately paged for each
of the four parts, the other continuously paged throughout
each volume. There the matter rested till 1885, when it
was pointed out that there were in 1726 two issues with
separate pagination and one with continuous pagination; and
Mr. Edward Solly suggested differentiating them as A, AA,
and B issues. In this he was followed by Mr. Ravenscroft
Dennis in the introduction to his edition of Gulliver1s
Travels. and by W. Spencer Jackson in his Bibliography of
the Writings of Jonathan Swift.
^"Motte Editions," Library. Fourth Series, VI (Decem
ber 1925), 229-262.
29
in 1938 and his Four Essays on "Gulliver's Travels1' in
1945. These four--Hubbard, Williams, Teerink, and Case--
stand as the major twentieth century textual critics of
Gulliver. Their central concerns have been (1) establish
ment of the order and nature of the Editions of Gulliver
and (2) selection of the most authentic text for modern
publication.
The textual materials requiring examination and col
lation were numerous. In the years before Hubbard and
Williams it was customary to view the first three Motte
printings of Gulliver as three issues of a 1726 edition.
The two printings which are dated 1727, one an octavo and
the other a duodecimo, were regarded as separate editions.
There were also two pirated Dublin editions, one published
in 1726 by J. Hyde and the other printed in 1727 for G.
Risk, G. Ewing, and W. Smith. In 1731 Motte issued a duo
decimo edition, and in 1735 the Dublin publisher Faulkner
brought out his revised edition. Faulkner's publication
began a long and acrimonious rivalry with Motte's successor,
Bathhurst, who entered the competition in 1742. Both
Faulkner and Bathhurst issued numerous editions between
1742 and 1772, the date of Faulkner's final edition.
Hubbard and Williams produced elaborate demonstra-
30
tlons that the three octave editions of 1726 were really
separate editions rather than merely different issues. One
of the most important clues to the theory of separate edi
tions was discovered by Hubbard, who noted for the first
time that an engraved portrait of Gulliver appeared in
three, rather than two states.^1 Both Hubbard and Williams
differentiated the editions in dozens of other particulars,
including title pages, typographical peculiarities, setting
of chapters, pagination, spelling, and punctuation. Wil
liams is thus able to conclude categorically:
. . . in 1726 Motte published three distinct editions
of Gulliver's Travels, the second set from the first,
and the third set from the second . . . They agree only
in general format, in a deceptive similarity of
appearance, and in following a single text which con
tained many verbal errors and some extensive departures
from the author's manuscript.^
Hubbard also established, and Williams concurred, that the
Contributions. pp. 25-26. "in the first state the
name and age of Gulliver appear on a tablet beneath the
oval frame surrounding his portrait; in the second, the
inscription is within the oval surrounding the portrait,
and on the obviously defaced tablet appear two lines from
Persius; in the third state the border lines of the tablet
and other details have been obviously retouched." See also
J. T. Winterich, "Gulliver's Travels" in Twenty-three
Books and the Stories behind Them (Berkeley, 1938), p.
216.
^"Motte Editions," p. 254.
31
rare and highly-prized large paper copies of the First
Edition represent an intermediate if not final printing of
that edition.6 Still further details are explored as to
the exact dates of the 1726 editions, with Hubbard and
Williams agreeing that the first appeared "28 October 1726,
not early in November as was previously inferred."^ They
also concluded that since the serial publication of Gulli
ver which began on Monday, 28 November, 1726, in Parker's
Penny Post, apparently used the "second" 1726 edition, the
second editions must have followed within less than three
weeks the appearance of the "first" edition (Williams,
"Motte," p. 252).
For the two editions of 1727, Williams established an
order based primarily upon the fact that the octavo edition
incorporates Ford's list of errata, presumably supplied
indirectly by Swift, whereas the duodecimo edition makes no
such corrections and follows the third octavo of 1726,
^Hubbard, Contributions, p. 28; and Harold Williams,
The Text of "Gulliver's Travels," (Cambridge, 1952), p.
lxii. The large paper copy is 22.5 x 13.5 cm and the small
is 19.5 x 12 cm.
^Williams credits Dennis with discovery of the exact
date of the first publication. "Motte Editions," p. 235.
32
except in the case of obvious typographical errors.® Thus,
the fourth octavo becomes the fifth Motte edition, and the
duodecimo, the fourth. The 1731 duodecimo edition is
8imply made up from the sheets of the first with an altered
general title-page. To confound subsequent scholars even
further, the old separate title-page to Part I, with the
date 1727, was retained.9
Professor H. C. Hutchins, in reviewing Williams's
edition of Gulliver. immediately objected to the use of the
term "edition" to designate Motte's publications of 1726.
Hutchins preferred the word "printing" because of the
problem raised by Motte's use of the term "The Second
Edition" on the second volume of both the second and the
third "printings" of 1726 and on volume one of the 1727
octavo, together with the use of "The Second Edition, Cor
rected" on volume two of the octavo edition of 1727.^®
Hutchins also pointed out that two editions, rather than
* *The Text of G. T. (Cambridge, 1952), pp. 260-261
and lv.
^Williams, "Motte Editions," p. 262, and The Text of
G. T.. p. lvi.
^■®Henry Clinton Hutchins, "Review of Gulliver's
TravelsReview of English Studies. Ill (1927), 468.
one, appeared under the Imprint of G. Risk, G. Ewing, and
W. Smith— a correction acknowledged by Williams.^
A more complete development of objections was set
forth by Teerink. Though agreeing that Hubbard and Wil
liams had shown conclusively that the three Motte publica
tions of 1726 may be discriminated as separate editions,
Teerink insisted upon the traditional and hence less con
fusing order which combined the editions of 1726 and thus
supported the logic of the title page of the Bathhurst
edition of 1742 which bears the statement The Fourth Edi-
12
tion Corrected. Teerink based his insistence on this
order upon the possibility that it might well have been
merely the printer rather than Motte himself, as Williams
suggests, who placed the caption "The Second Edition" on
the title-page of Vol. II of the second printing of 1726.
11Page 468, and Williams, "Gulliver's Travels: fur
ther Notes," Library. Fourth Series (September 1928), p.
188.
^■^Herman Teerink, A Bibliography of the Writings in
Prose and Verse of Jonathan Swift, P.P. (The Hague, 1927),
p. 174. Teerink states: "I think it advisable to stick to
the well-established practice of calling the three 1726
editions first (A, AA, and B), the 1927 8vo edition second,
and the 1927 12mo edition third; after which Bathhurst1s
1742, 1747 and 1751 editions as fourth, fifth, and sixth
follow in regular sequence,"
34
Teerink reminds his readers that the phrase did not reap
pear until the octavo of 1727 where Volume I is labeled
"The Second Edition" and Volume II "The Second Edition Cor
rected." These denotations Teerink interprets as meaning,
This is (absolutely) the second edition, the three pre
ceding editions of 1726 counting as one, and compared
with them important corrections have been made in this
one. (p. 174)
Teerink also protests the statement by Williams that
the duodecimo edition was published prior to the octavo of
1727. Though he admits the prior printing of the duodecimo
edition, Teerink challenges the prior publication on the
grounds that the first appearance of the cuts for which
Swift gives direction in a letter to Motte of December 28,
1727, is in the duodecimo edition which could thus hardly
have appeared before January of 1728. Teerink's second sup
port for this position concerns the verses by Pope^ which
do not appear in the 1726 editions. Of these Teerink says:
The first mention of them occurs in a letter from
Pope to Swift, 18 Febr. 1727. In spite of Pope's
disapprobation of them, the three Verses mentioned by
13
Norman Ault in his article, "Pope and Gulliver,
with a New Poem by His Hand: 'The King of Brobdingnag,'"
National Review. CXXII (June, 1944), 510-516, offers
extended evidence that all five poems are the work of Pope
with the possible collaboration of Gay on one of them.
35
him, together with a fourth, first appeared in the 8vo
edition 1727, immediately after the title-page in Vol.
I. They cover 20 pages, marked )( at the top. Later
copies have a fifth Verse added, covering 4 pages,
also marked )( at the top. The 12mo edition also
contains the Verses, the five at once together. This
again proves that the 8vo edition appeared before the
12mo edition. (p. 173)
However, though the date of the letter to Motte is strong
evidence of the prior publication of the duodecimo edition,
it is hardly conclusive, especially when coupled with a
glib treatment of the poem which offers no substantiation
for such phrases as "first appeared" and "later copies."
Certainly the poem might quite as easily have been deleted
in earlier copies as added in "later copies."
While the question of the dating of various editions
may hold great interest for the textual specialist, of
greater moment for all critics has been the controversy
concerning the most acceptable text for publication in
modern editions. Here opinion has shifted, in the twenti
eth century, from the Motte editions, favored by Sir Henry
Craik (1894) and Henry Morley (1890), to the Faulkner edi
tion, chosen by Hayward for the Nonesuch Swift in 1934
and by Harold Williams and Herbert Davis for the Oxford
edition of 1959. Indeed, Bonamy Dobree in his English
Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century. 1700-1740
36
(1959) says, echoing the tones of Shakespearean criticism,
"The Faulkner text is now considered the 'good' one."14
John Hayward sums up the case succinctly in his "Note upon
the Text" prepared for the Nonesuch Swift;
The text, particularly of the third and fourth parts,
of Motte's early editions--there were six of them
between 1726 and 1736— is unsatisfactory in several
respects. Owing to Motte's timidity, words and whole
passages in the MS. were altered or omitted without the
author's knowledge. Fortunately, Swift indicated these
alterations and omissions to his friend Charles Ford of
Woodpark, who corrected them in his own interleaved
large-paper copy of the first edition. This volume, now
in the Forster collection, is of the highest textual
importance. Although Motte had received a list of ver
bal and typographical corrections from Ford in January
1726/7 and incorporated nearly all of them in his
fourth octavo edition [1727], it was not until Swift's
publisher, George Faulkner, published Gulliver's Travels
as the third volume of the first collected edition of
Swift's works in 1735 that all the words and passages
noted by Ford in his own copy were restored. It is now
known that Swift, though originally antagonistic to
Faulkner's proposal, eventually submitted to it and was
persuaded to look over the sheets of the first four
volumes.
While it is true that the text of the first edition
has a sentimental interest as the original version given
to the world, it is obvious that Faulkner's revision
follows more closely Swift's MS. The principle hitherto
adopted by editors of Gulliver's Travels has been to
reprint Motte's edition incorporating Ford's corrections.
I have preferred to reprint Faulkner's text and the
result, I venture to believe, is a more exact and reli
able text than any that has been published in the last
two hundred years.^
14(Oxford, 1959), p. 685.
^(New York, 1940), n.p.
This shift to the Faulkner edition is largely the
product of the painstaking efforts of Harold Williams, who
first established his case in the Introduction to his 1926
edition of Gulliver, ironically an anniversary edition of
the Text of the First Edition. Here Williams traces
Swift's correspondence with Motte and others regarding
Faulkner's desire to publish an edition of his works, and
demonstrates quite clearly that Swift's early displeasure
with the project became an active interest in assuring a
more accurate text than that achieved by Motte (pp. xxxviii-
xli). As further support of Swift's interest in the edi
tion, Williams attributes to Swift himself the "Letter from
Capt. Gulliver to His Cousin Sympson," virtually a new
preface which is published in the Faulkner edition. Wil
liams calls upon Hubbard's certainty that the letter was
written especially for Faulkner as substantiating evi
dence . ^
^Pages xlii-xlv, and Hubbard, Contributions. p. 76.
Williams finds still more evidences of Swift's interest in
this edition in Orrery's statement, "I was acquainted with
the Dean, at the time when Faulkner's edition came out,
and therefore must always look upon that copy as most
authentic, well knowing that Mr. Faulkner had the advantage
of printing his edition, by the consent and approbation of
the author himself" (xlvi); in Swift's own letter to
In his search for internal evidence, Williams is
perhaps less convincing, as it is not easy to prove con
clusively, as he attempts to do, that many of the textual
corrections in the Faulkner edition "are frequently of a
character unlikely to have been made either by the printer
or by Swift’s friends" (p. xlvii). Just why delicate
adjustments regarding the ages of Lilliputian apprentices
might not have been made by someone other than Swift is a
bit difficult to demonstrate, especially in the light of
later critics, definitely not Swift, who have been so con
cerned with similar matters of detail.^ Perhaps one of
Williams's most telling arguments is his notation that
Mottefs successor Bathhurst from the first "had the good
sense to recognize the superiority of Faulkner's revised
text," and largely followed it, particularly in Parts III
Pope, "As to the printing of my things going on here, it
is an evil I cannot prevent. I shall not be a penny the
richer. Some friends correct the errors, and now and then
I look on them for a minute or two" (xl); and in
Faulkner's 1768 account of Swift's reading of proof. ("To
the Reader," Works, vol. I, pp. viii-xlv).
^Note especially Case, Essays. pp. 50-68, and
Florence Moog, "Gulliver was a Bad Biologist," Scientific
American. CLXXVII (November 1948), 52-55.
39
and IV.18
Williams readily admitted that to approximate Swift's
original manuscript the best solution would be to use the
Motte editions collated with the restorations in Ford's
interleaved volume.*9 The Faulkner text is not in any
sense identical with the original manuscript. Williams,
however, was confident as early as 1926 that the Faulkner
text is the form finally approved by Swift himself and,
therefore, preferable for modern editions.
One wishes that the matter might rest here, but it
does not. Two significant voices, those of Arthur Case and
Irvin Ehrenpreis, have been raised in protest against the
use of the Faulkner edition in modem printings. Arthur
Case in the first of his Four Essays on Gulliver's Travels
(1945) elaborately reproduces the correspondence of Swift
with Motte and others regarding Faulkner, the pertinent
"Remarks” of the Earl of Orrery, and the testimony of
*-8"Gulliver's Travels: further Notes," Library,
Fourth Series (September 1928), 122.
l^Williams, Text of First Edition, p. 50. A. B.
Gough in his edition of Gulliver's Travels (Oxford, 1924),
p. xxiii reaches a similar conclusion and for his text
uses "substantially Motte's second edition, that of 1727,
with the numerous corrections in Ford's interleaved copy of
the first."
40
20
Faulkner himself. Case accepts these as evidence of
Swift*s interest in the Faulkner edition, at the same time
challenging the Orrery and Faulkner statements of the
degree to which Swift was involved in the textual changes.
However, this challenge is not Case's primary concern.
He wishes to establish the basic text from which the
Faulkner Edition of 1735 derived and then to assay the
value of the alterations in this text.
Though Swift, as Case establishes, had written Ford
on October 9, 1733, requesting the use of Ford's inter
leaved copy of the first edition of the Travels. and Ford
had offered to correct a copy of the "second" edition (the
1727 octavo), Case assumes that Ford did not carry out his
intention because none of the new minor errors of the
octavo edition appear in the 1735 text. What then is the
basis of the Faulkner edition? Case, suddenly eschewing
his general distrust of Faulkner, accepts quite literally
Faulkner's "Advertisement" at the beginning of the 1735
edition:
. . . the Copy sent to the Bookseller in London, was
a Transcript of the Original, which Original being in
the Possession of a very worthy Gentleman in London,
20(Princeton, 1945), pp. 3-18.
41
and a most Intimate Friend of the Authors; after he had
bought the Book in Sheets, and compared it with the
Originals, bound it up with blank Leaves, and made those
Corrections, which the Reader will find in our Edi
tion. For, the same Gentleman did us the Favour to let
us transcribe his Corrections. (p. 19)
Case, thus, assumes that Ford did not do as he had promised
but, Instead, supplied his incorrectly interleaved copy of
an edition which he had said was defective in comparison
with the "second edition."
Also, while denying the testimony of Orrery and
Faulkner concerning the active participation of Swift in
the editing of the 1735 edition, Case chooses to accept
their suggestions that an "editor" other than Swift or
Faulkner was involved in this edition. Case selects Delany
and dismisses the "friends" participating in the reading of
proof as irresponsible individuals who
made emendations in accord either with their own ideas
or with general principles laid down by Swift, who
from time to time worked with them and undoubtedly made
some alterations of his own. (p. 48)
The account which Case gives of the 1735 edition is unlikely
to inspire confidence. Indeed, Case discounts the result
quite airily as "a composite and relatively untrustworthy
piece of editing." This evidence, together with a twenty-
eight page collation of passages in the 1735 edition with
their parallels in one or another of Motte's four octavo
42
editions, leads Case to conclude:
The text of 1726 as amended by Ford's careful compari
son with the original manuscript, on the other hand, is
universally agreed to be as close as is humanly possible
to the book as its author intended it to be at the
close of a six-year period of Inspired creation and
detailed revision. It is incomparably the best basis
for a text of Gulliver's Travels.21
In this conclusion Case is establishing a new textual
claim. As Irvin Ehrenpreis points out, it had been the
fashion for yeara before Hubbard and Williams to follow
the 1727 octavo and emend it by the Ford-Foster Gulliver.
It should also be noted that, though generally approving
Case's position on the grounds that Faulkner's over
punctuation grows from edition to edition and that some
of the Ford-Foster material is still missing or subdued in
Faulkner, Ehrenpreis in 1953 complicates the issue by sug
gesting that the ideal edition would be Motte's first
edition, corrected for sense by Faulkner, and supplemented
by the Ford-Foster additions. 22
21
Page 49. In Case's own edition of Gulliver (New
York, 1938) the text "is based on the Huntington Library's
common paper copy of the first edition (HL 106606), collated
with the large paper copy (HL 106645), and corrected by
photographic reproductions of Charles Ford's letter to
Motte and his manuscript notes in his large paper copy of
the Travels" (p. 354).
22
"Review," Philological Quarterly. XXII (July 1953),
297-299.
43
On the other hand, Harold Davis both in reviewing
Case's Essays (1946) and in his choice of the Faulkner text
for the Oxford edition of the Works (1959) aligns himself
with Hubbard and Williams rather than Case and Ehrenpreis.
In his review of Case's Essays Davis considers additional
evidence of Swift's part in the Faulkner edition and sug
gests that Case's attempts to evaluate the alterations in
Faulkner (evaluations with which Davis does not entirely
agree) involve problems of variant taste rather than prov
able fact.^ Davis is willing to admit the validity of
Case's contention that the Faulkner text is "a composite
and relatively untrustworthy piece of editing" and that the
text of 1726 with Ford's emendations is as close as one may
come to Swift's manuscript of 1726, but he suggests the
need to distinguish between the question of the value of
the Faulkner text as the one finally approved by Swift and
the question of its standard of proofreading:
^Case analyzes "Alterations in Meaning" showing a
few instances in which the reading of the 1735 text is
preferable, numerous instances where it is not, and a few
in which the emendations are debatable. In the analysis
of "Alterations in Grammar and Idiom," Case finds only two
out of eighteen are "for the better." "Alterations in
Style" are all felt to be "inconsistent." Case, pp. 21-48.
"Review of Case's Essays," Ehilo logical Quarterly. XXV
(April 1946), 165-166.
44
. . . for a collected edition of Swift's Worka I still
prefer to use for Gulliver's Travels the text with the
author's latest corrections, however spoiled by bad
proofreading, just the same as I choose also for all
other pieces the latest text revised by the author
where such revision is available.24
Harold Williams in his introduction to the Revised Oxford
Edition of 1959 concurs:
An examination of the separate volumes of the Works
published by Faulkner during Swift's lifetime shows
that the revision was unequal. But one conclusion
admits of no doubt, that the text of Gulliver's Travels
represents, as nearly as may be, the book which Swift
expected Motte to publish; and, in addition, it received
final touches of revision. This edition is, therefore,
printed from the Faulkner text of 1735. (p. xxvii)
Thus, while the eighteenth century advocates of Motte
managed to discredit the Faulkner text and establish the
authenticity of the Motte text in a tradition which extended
from the 1740's well into the twentieth century, the twen
tieth century advocates of Faulkner have reversed the
situation and the Faulkner text, with some emendations in
particulars, is in the ascendency. This major critical
reversal was achieved in large measure by the efforts of
Harold Williams.
^Revised ed., The Works. I (Oxford, 1959), p. xi.
45
Textual discrepancies in geography
and chronology
Although the relative merits of the Motte and Faulk
ner texts have been the central textual concern of the twen
tieth century critics of Gulliver. several other textual
controversies have developed. Two of the most significant
concern discrepancies between the geographical descriptions
in the text and the geography of the illustrative maps and
discrepancies in the chronology established for the voy
ages. Comparatively little attention had been paid to
these problems until the detailed consideration by Robert
Moore in 1941, followed in 1945 by Arthur Case's extensive
discus8ion in "The Geography and Chronology of Gulliver's
Travels." one of his Four Essays.
Moore describes the situation as follows:
Not only are the fanciful regions of Brobdingnag and
Laputa quite unlike those shown on the maps of the
First Edition; even if we allow for all possible errors
from slips of unsupervised printers in faraway London,
and for the probability of still greater errors from
editorial attempts to correct the text, the geography
of the book is so incredible that we must assume (1)
that Swift intended an extravagant burlesque on voyages,
or (2) that he was Ignorant of geography, or (3) that
he Intended a burlesque and knew too little geography
to carry it out accurately.25
25*'xhe Geography of Gulliver's Travels." Journal of
English and Germanic Philology. XL (April 1941), 226.
46
This statement is later augmented by Moore's theory that
Swift's contempt for the natural sciences included geography
and that the remarks by Gulliver regarding the errors of
the map-makers of his day is still another attack on false
learning.^
In the interim between Moore and Case, Frederick
Bracher took up Moore's challenge to look at the maps. He
agreed with Moore concerning Swift's disdain for "the kind
of knowledge embodied in maps, boyages, and geographical
works," but he did more than speculate. He established the
source for the maps appearing in the Travels as Moll's "A
New & Correct Map of the Whole World . . ."of 1717.^
^After leaving the land of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver
says, "I arrived in seven hours to the southeast point of
New Holland. This confirmed me in the opinion I have long
entertained, that the maps and charts place this country
at least three degrees more to the east than it really is;
which thought I communicated many years ago to my worthy
friend Mr. Herman Moll and gave him my reasons for it,
although he hath rather chosen to follow other authors."
W. H. Bonner, in Captain William Dampier (Stanford, 1934),
compares this comment with a similar account in Dampier and
explains: "Swift is here bringing into his narrative a
common point of argument among mariners of the old school--
the calculation of distances east and west. There was no
exact longitude until after 1735, only differences of
longitude" (p. 173).
^ F r e d e r i c k Bracher, "The Maps in Gulliver's Travels,"
Huntington Library Quarterly. VII (November 1944), 73.
47
He further concluded, as did Moore, that the maps were
drawn by one man, working from Swift's text and Moll's map,
but engraved by another man who misread some of the n a m e s . ^ 8
In searching for the actual draftsman and engraver, Bracher
eliminated Andrew Tooke, son of Benjamin Tooke, the book
seller who published Swift's early works, and Andrew Motte,
brother of the publisher of Gulliver, who assisted him in
editorial work; and settled upon John Sturt and Robert
Sheppard (pp. 71-73).
Case eschewed the unsubstantiated hypotheses of Moore
and Bracher and documents the view--first outlined in 1938
--that Swift took great pains to make the parts of the
Travels which describe Gulliver's journeys to and from the
fabulous lands he visited as circumstantial as possible.^9
Swift's problem was to find in unexplored portions of the
globe locations for seven imaginary countries, two of which
were of considerable size:
. . . the three smallest countries, Lilliput, Blefuscu,
and Houyhnhnmland, are placed not far from Australia,
although on different sides, and Brobdingnag, Balnlbarbi,
and the islands described in the third voyage are
28
Page 61. Bracher worked from a copy in the Hunt
ington Library in San Marino, California.
2^See Case, 1938 Edition, p. 350.
48
situated in the North Pacific, by far the largest area
which remained unexplored by Europeans in 1720.
(Essays, p. 52)
Case believed that simple errors in the proof of the text
and in the maps led to Swift's being charged with an inac
curacy of which he was not guilty. For example, the simple
mistaken assumption that Lilliput lay northwest of Tasmania
rather than northeast created such ludicrous results as
having Gulliver attempt to sail entirely around Australia
in search of an island on which to land, or the ship's
captain laying a southeasterly course from the environs of
Sumatra in order to reach England.30
Case also convincingly defended the chronological
further confusion was created by the erroneous
Information in the first chapter of Book III that Gulliver
was picked up by pirates at approximately "The Latitude of
46 N. and of Longitude 183." This spot, Case assures his
readers, "if previous calculations are correct, lies within
the boundaries of Brobdlngnag" (p. 58). A detailed exam
ination of this problem reveals to Case that a simple cor
rection to 20° N and 145° E would clear up the difficulty
(pp. 58-60). Finally, Case, in opposition to Dennis,
affirms the accuracy of the original text in the use of the
term southeast rather than southwest when Gulliver mistak
enly surmises that Houyhnhnmland lay west of New Holland
(Australia) and, therefore, if he sailed east he would come
to the southwest coast of Australia. Instead he achieved
the southeast coast and Case insists upon this reading
(pp. 60-61). As of 1960, Case's analysis of these geo
graphical discrepancies stands essentially unchallenged, in
part because the number of critics Interested in exploring
such details has not been great.
accuracy of Books I, II, and IV, again by suggesting minor
adjustments of Inaccuracies which might have occurred at
the hands of copyists or typesetters. For a solution to
the more complex and unsatisfactory chronology of Book III,
he resort8 to speculation on the possibility that in the
original draft this book may have been intended to occupy
over five years and may have included a visit to another
country between the visit to Balnibarbi and to Luggnagg.
Such a possibility would solve all chronological discrepan
cies. Case, however, admits that though the explanation is
tempting, "there is no external evidence to support it"
(P. 67).
In general, Swift emerges as the victim of minor
errors at the hands of printer and engraver. The thesis,
however, that Swift disdained the details of geography as
a part of his larger antipathy toward the excesses of
science remains a valid, if speculative, possibility.
Date of composition
A third concern of the textual critic has been the
date of composition of the various portions of Gulliver.
The issues which have been in dispute since the eighteenth
century are simply (1) how much, if any, of Gulliver is
50
based upon materials written by Swift in 1714 for the
Memoirs of Martin Scrlblerus. and (2) how much, if any, of
Gulliver was written during the first six years of Swift's
"Irish exile," 1714 to 1720.
Evidence from the eighteenth century on both these
issues was inconclusive until the publication in 1935 of
The Letters of Jonathan Swift to Charles Ford, edited by
D. Nichol Smith. It was common knowledge that Swift was a
member of a rather exclusive group, known as the Scrlblerus
Club and composed of a group of Tory sympathizers including
Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Gay, and, as an occasional visitor,
Parnell. It was also well established that in 1713-14
Pope suggested a joint satire on pedantry in the form of
the memoirs of a fictitious universal pedant, one Martin
Scrlblerus. Each member of the Club was to expose pedantry
in one or more fields and the whole would be arranged and
presented by the group. With the fall of the Tory regime
in 1714, however, the Club dissolved, leaving no records as
to how much had been written during the Club's period of
greatest activity, February to June, 1714, or as to how
much Swift had participated in the enterprise. The Memoirs
of Martinus Scrlblerus duly appeared in 1741, but that the
sixteenth chapter of these Memoirs ("Of the Succession of
51
Martinu8 and soma Hint of Hia Travels") gives an account of
travels undertaken by Scriblerus which are similar in num
ber and character to those in Gulliver proved nothing con
cerning Gulliver's indebtedness to Scriblerian material,
for the chapter might have been worked out at any time
between 1714 and 1741 and inserted, as Quintanta suggests,
as "a good-natured hoax designed to increase the sales of
the Memoirs.
The eighteenth century record regarding Swift's
literary activity in relation to Gulliver between 1714 and
1720 is equally ambiguous. No epistolary comments from
Swift seemed to exist, and as both Case and Williams point
out, Swift's early biographers were divided. Orrery, in
his Remarks (1752), and Deane Swift, in his Essay upon the
31
Introduction, p. 145. Sir Charles Firth, in his
study of "Political Significance of 'Gulliver's Travels,"'
Essays. Historical and Literary (Oxford, 1938), p. 211,
cites additional contemporary evidence in Pope's remark to
Spence, "It was from a part of these memoirs that Dr. Swift
took his first hints for Gulliver. There were pigmies in
Schrelbler's travels and the projects of Laputa." But, as
Case point8 out, it is curious that one should be thought
to have taken hints from himself (Essays, p. 105), and on
the basis of his examination of early Scriblerus material
not by Swift, Case concludes that "the hints" were for the
projects of Laputa, and were, in fact, from the contribu
tions of others, not Swift. Thus the Memoirs became source
rather than early version.
52
Life (1755), both contended that Gulliver was written
largely in the interval between 1714 and 1720; whereas
Delaney, who had actually known Swift during this period,
stated in his Observations upon Lord Orrery's Remarks
(1754), that no part of Swift's time during the early years
at the Deanery was occupied with the composition of
Gulliver.3^
In the absence of a clear record, there were a number
of disputes over these questions. Sir Charles Firth,
Harold Williams, Charles Kerby-Miller, Arthur Case, and
above all D. Nichol Smith have been the most notable con
tributors. The general trend has been to discount more and
more Swift's use in Gulliver of material intended for the
Memoirs and to assume less and less likelihood that Swift
did anything on Gulliver between 1714 and 1720.
Charles Firth vacillated between the old and the new
views. Writing in 1919 on "The Political Significance of
Gulliver's Travels," Firth assured his readers that--on the
basis of Pope's remarks to Spence together with the inter
nal evidence derived from an analysis of the political
allusions in the Voyages--the First and Third Voyages each
0 9
J*Dennis, p. xi; Williams, Oxford Edition, p. xvii.
53
consisted of a part which was written about 1714 for the
Scriblerus Memoirs and each also contained parts written
later. However, Firth eschewed the theory that Swift was
writing any of Gulliver between the revolution of 1714 and
his admission to Ford on April 15, 1721, that he was "now
writing a History of my Travels" (pp. 211-214).
Harold Williams in his 1926 Edition concluded in an
even more ambivalent manner:
Internal evidence, therefore, leads to the conviction
that parts of the first and third Voyages, probably
not a very considerable portion of the whole, were
composed in some form soon after Swift came into resi
dence as Dean of St. Patrick's, and then laid aside.
Later, beginning about 1720, to judge by the contempo
rary references of the narrative, he took up his
imaginary Travels, altering the earlier fragments and
embodying them in the later whole. Swift's corres
pondence confirms the internal evidence of his book.
(p. xx)
Williams's phrasing, "not a very considerable portion
of the whole" and "fragments," lessened the importance of
the Scriblerian contributions, but his assumption that
Swift worked on the material in the early days of the
Deanery was less up-to-date than Firth's view.
Then in 1935 came the edition of Swift's letters to
Ford, edited by D. Nichol Smith. In his Introduction,
Smith reviews the state of evidence before the Ford letters
--the conflicting testimony of Delany, Orrery and Deane
54
Swift; Bolingbroke'a statement In a letter of January 1,
1922, "I long to see your Travels," which might suggest
that they were then finished; and Vanessa's letter of June,
1722, showing her familiarity with an episode in the Voyage
to Brobdlngnag. Smith then indicates the general tendency
to believe Gulliver to be the product of Swift's first six
years in the Irish Deanery--years of depression and de
spondence (pp. xxxviii-xxxix). As Smith demonstrates,
however, a brief review of all the known references made by
Swift in the newly collected letters to Ford regarding the
writing of Gulliver points to the conclusion:
. . . that Swift was at work in earnest by 1721, that
he had written the draft of the first two Voyages before
the end of 1723, that he wrote the fourth Voyage next
and had completed the draft by January 1724, and that
he was then engaged on the third Voyage. At the begin
ning of April he expected to finish the book "very soon."
But in February or March he had begun The Drapier's
Letters, and he was occupied with them till the end of
the year. The revision of the Travels and the incor
poration of new material, suggested partly by the cir
cumstances which had called forth the Letters, may be
assigned to 1725. By August of that year he had fin
ished his Travels and was transcribing them. (p. xl)
Nichol Smith, thus, offers a clear and as yet unchallenged
account of dating, though he does not cope with the problem
of the Memoirs as either source or early version.
The following year, 1936, Quintana announced in his
Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift that owing to the efforts
of Firth, Williams, and Nichol Smith, "The various stages
in the growth of Swift's great satire from its inception
in 1714 to it8 publication on 28 October 1726 now stand
fully revealed" (p. 289). Quintana admits that he simply
takes over almost all of the statements concerning the "MS
of 1714" and its relation to Gulliver's Travels as it "is
now known from Firth" (p. 388). He particularly adopts
Firth's belief that Swift derived from Scriblerean days
Chapters one and two of Lilliput and "the projects of
Laputa" (Quintana, pp. 291-293; Firth, pp. 214, 232). He
differs from Firth only in asserting that Chapter six of
Book One also had a place in the 1714 MS (p. 388). How
ever, when The Mind and Art was reprinted in 1953, Quintana
added a new Preface and there expressed particular concern
for the problems relating to the composition of Gulliver.
He cites specifically the post-1936 contributions of Arthur
Case regarding the composition of Gulliver and those of
Charles Kerby-Miller regarding the relationship between
the Memoirs and Gulliver, admitting that these should
supersede his view in 1936.
In 1945 Case analyzed all the evidence, reproducing
in chronological order all the pertinent passages from all
the correspondence of Swift and his friends, particularly
56
that Involving Ford, Bolingbroke, and Pope (Essays, pp.
97-102). On the basis of this date, Case proceeds to anni
hilate the "orthodox theory," namely that:
What now constitutes the first, second, and sixth chap
ters of the Voyage to Lilliput was originally intended
as a rather light-hearted parody of travel literature.
Another unfinished composition, a burlesque of experi
mental science, eventually became the fifth and sixth
chapters of the Voyage to Laputa. (pp. 102-103)
His conclusion was the same as that which he had given in
his 1938 edition of Gulliver:
There is no evidence that he [Swift] wrote any part
of the TraveIs at this time [1714], or, if he did,
that he incorporated what he wrote in the finished
work. (p. 343)
Case's only concession to the idea of any relationship
between Scriblerus and Gulliver is the possibility that
Swift may have taken a few hints from the work of Arbuthnot
for the projects of Laputa (Essays. p. 105).
In 1950, Charles Kerby-Miller, addressed himself to
the problem of the relationship between the Memoirs and
Gulliver. He argued that the close correspondence between
the summary of the four voyages in Chapter Sixteen of the
Memoirs and the pattern of Gulliver made it likely that
Pope deliberately edited the Memoirs so as to connect it
with Gulliver. Kerby-Miller also concluded, however, that
whether or not the Scriblerians had gone so far as to write
57
any of the travels of Martinus, it seems likely that the
plans and discussion of the club members had influenced
Swift and that ’’ the result by an evolutionary process, was
Gulliver's Travels." Thus the matter rests upon a theory
of informal and conjectural influence.
Em{Aiasis upon the exceedingly limited relationship
between Gulliver and Scriblerus has persisted in such later
writers as M u r r y ^ and E h r e n p r e i s .^5 Ehrenpreis even
questions the wisdom of considering the Scriblerus papers
as a probable beginning for Gulliver. Such concern for
Scriblerus was suitable when it was assumed that Swift was
composing A Voyage to Lilliput in 1715, but, Ehrenpreis
argues, now that the Ford letters have demonstrated that
Swift wrote Part I about 1721-22, Part II about 1722-23,
Part IV in 1723, and Part III (after Part IV) in 1723-25,
it would be more profitable to investigate, as a basis for
Gulliver. Swift's literary activity between 1714 and 1721,
particularly the fact that during this period he was
^^Memoirs of . . . Scriblerus (New Haven, 1950), p.
50.
34
John Middleton Murry, Jonathan Swift (New York,
1955), p. 330.
^ The Personality of Jonathan Swift (Cambridge, Mass.,
1958), pp. 83-85.
58
writing a succession of essays chiefly on English politics
between 1708 and 1715 (pp. 83-85).
A few critics, building on Ford's generalizations,
have endeavored to pinpoint the date of composition of
particular passages in Gulliver. In 1937, Marjorie Nichol
son and Nora Mohler added a bit of evidence for the late
composition of the Voyage to Laputa by pointing out that
several of the scientific experiments which Swift followed
most closely in the voyage were performed as late as 1724
and that the complete scientific works of Robert Boyle,
which they believe Swift to have used, were not published
until 1725.36
In 1948* Aline Mackenzie, in seeking to establish
the popular entertainments of Swift’s day and the Harlequin
pantomimes or "entertainments of John Rich in particular,"
as the sources of the rope dancing scene in Gulliver,
postulated that since Swift probably made the acquaintance
of Rich's Harlequinades only during his sojourn in England
between March and August 15, 1726, the rope dancing section
of the Voyage to Lilliput must be one of Swift's last
3<>"The scientific Background of Swift's 'Voyage to
Laputa,'" Annals of Science. II (1937), 114-115, 128.
59
revisions in the manuscript of Gulliver's Travels. Some
support for this dating may be found, as she points out,
In the companion allusion to the colored silk thread with
which the feat of creeping under a stick and leaping over
it was rewarded. This thread is usually assumed to allude
to Walpole's "revival" of the Order of the Bath, in which
he himself was the first to be invested on May 27, 1925.
Thus, the passage could not have been written earlier than
May, 1725, and may not have been incorporated until the
37
following year. Miss Mackenzie seeks further evidence of
late revision in the interpretation that the satire relates
to two other episodes of 1726--Swift's unsatisfactory
interview with Walpole regarding the "Irish view of Irish
affairs," on April 27, 1726, and Pope's annoyance at Lewis
Theobald's criticism of Pope's edition of Shakespeare,
criticism which appeared in Theobald's Shakespeare Restored
(March, 1726), a volume dedicated to John Rich,'V*ho . . .
had gone a great way towards shutting Shakespeare out of
the theatre in favour of pantomimes" (p. 538). Miss
Mackenzie reaches the obvious conclusion that the panto-
^"Another Note on 'Gulliver's Travels,'" Notes and
Queries. CXCIII (December 1948), 535-537.
60
mimist Rich may well have been much in Pope's mind while
Swift was at Twickenham that same spring. Even more top
ical was Walpole's quitting of the Order of the Bath for
the more distinctive Order of the Garter on June 26, 1726.
With this, Miss Mackenzie rests her case for the late date
of revision and insertion of some of the most memorable
details of the Voyage to Lilliput (pp. 537-538).
Out of these discussions of the date of composition
have come two important critical reversals. Before 1935
it was widely assumed that Swift incorporated in the
Voyages to Lilliput and Laputa considerable material that
had been written in 1714 for the Memoirs of Martinus
Scriblerus and that he also wrote parts of Gulliver between
1714 and 1720. Since the work of midtwentieth century
textual critics, particularly of Nichol Smith and Case, it
is generally agreed that little if any Scriblerian material
appears in Gulliver and that Swift wrote all of Gulliver
after 1720. The order of the writing of the books— I
(1721-2), II (1722-3), IV (1723), and III (1723-5)— has
also been established. This concern for the dating of the
composition of various parts of Gulliver is obviously not a
matter of idle curiosity. It is the substratum upon which
theories regarding the contemporary political references in
61
Gulliver must be built. It is also evidence for those who
would either defend or criticize the artistic unity of the
work.
Source Studies
Source hunting long has been a part of Swift re
search. Even Swift's contemporaries were well aware of
debts to Rabelais, to Lucian's True Story, and to Cyrano
de Bergerac's Voyage to the Moon, to which Scott added
Fhilostratus and Herodotus.^8 Twentieth century criticism
in this area has not so much broken new ground as built an
enormous superstructure of possibility and parallelism. In
some respects those concerned with political and scientific
sources have been more creative than those seeking paral
lels in literary sources. The former have linked their
findings more closely with general interpretations of mean
ing and significance; whereas those dealing in literary
sources generally merely added to or subtracted from the
D. Taylor in Jonathan Swift: A Critical Essay
(London, 1933) notes that "Fielding said that there was
more of Lucian in Swift than there was of Rabelais or
Cervantes," p. 2. Huntington Brown in Rabelais in English
Literature (Cambridge, Mass., 1933) reproduces comparisons
of Swift and Rabelais and Swift and Cervantes by Bentley,
Lord Bathhurst, Pope, and Gay, pp. 168-170, 172.
62
store of originality granted to Swift. Unfortunately, no
John Livingston Lowes has arisen among Swiftians to depict
the miraculous transmuting of sources into art. Most source
hunters have had a rather rigid preoccupation with the
methodology of the courtroom.
Literary sources
The most comprehensive study of the literary sources
of Gulliver is that of William Eddy, Gulliver's Travels:
A Critical Study, published in 1923. Before the work of
Eddy, which dominated the decade of the twenties, there
had been sporadic attention to literary sources. In 1890,
Henry Morley, noting the common recognition of Cyrano de
Bergerac's playful voyages to the sun and the moon as the
prime sources of Gulliverappended to his edition a
biography of Bergerac and a detailed description of the
voyages.
In 1891, James Hay brought to the attention of the
general literary public his discovery of an obscure article
in The Quarterly Review telling of Swift's almost verbatim
transcription of a description of a storm from Samuel
39
Gulliver's Travels, ed. Henry Morley (London,
1890), p. 21.
63
Sturmy's Mariner's Magazine, published in the late seven
teenth century.^0 Hay also hastens to add a warning to
those who might take the discovery as a cause c^lebre to
charge Swift with lack of originality:
To say that "Gulliver is not original because Swift
borrowed these hints from Sturmy, would be as absurd
as to say that 'Sartor Resartus' is not original
because Carlyle borrowed hints from Swift's "Tale
of a Tub." (pp. 293-294)
When G. Ravenscroft Dennis wrote the introduction to
Volume VIII of the Temple Scott edition of The Prose
Works of Jonathan Swift, in 1899, he boldly confronted
this central problem--the question of Swift's originality
in the face of numerous suggestions of sources:
A great deal has been written^ on the indebtedness of
40
Swift: The Mystery of His Life and Love (London,
1891), pp. 290-292. W. A. Eddy, Critical Study (Princeton,
1923), p. 143, says that the first to notice the debt was
E. H. Knowles, Notes & Queries. March 7, 1868, Ser. IV,
vol. I, p. 223. Eddy reproduces the parallels from Churton
Collins, Jonathan Swift (1902), pp. 107-108, implying that
Collins was the first to bring them to literary attention,
p. 65. As late as 1947, Edmund Acworth in his Swift (Lon
don, 1947), p. 207, comments that the Swift passage has
often been quoted as an example of Swift's extraordinary
knowledge of subjects outside his field. Acworth apparent
ly did not realize that it was a '"theft' without acknow
ledgment ."
^The articles of Hormcher and Borkowsky, "Quellen
zu Dean Swift's Gulliver's Travels." appeared respectively
64
Swift to previous writers, and attempts have been made
to show that every incident, and almost every paragraph
in Gulliver’s Travels was borrowed. The result of
these researches is unconvincing. That Swift had
read and assimilated the writings of Lucian, Rabelais,
Cyrano de Bergerac, and others, is of course true,
and it is not difficult to show resemblances to these
works in certain passages of Gulliver. Thus Rabelais
suggested the Academy of Projectors, Gulliver's method
of extinguishing the fire, and some of the descrip
tions of ancient heroes called up on the island of
Glubdubdrib. Much more was taken from Bergerac's
"Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires de la Lune et
du Soleil," first published in 1656-1661, and trans
lated into English by A. Lovell in 1687. Founded on
Lucian and Rabelais, Bergerac's work was a satire on
the speculative philosophy of his time, and there is
no doubt that from it Swift received hints for many of
his incidents, especially in the "Voyage to Brobding-
nag," and "Voyage to the Houyhnhnms." In some in
stances, indeed, he seems to have borrowed ideas
almost word for word. He had probably read also the
"Histoire des Sevarambes," by Denys Vairasse d'alais
(1677-9), and Gabriel Foligny's "Nouveau Voyage de la
Terre Australe Connue, par Jacques Sadeur," (1676),
and Godwin's "Voyage of Domingo Gonzales to the
World of the Moon," a book which certainly influenced
Cyrano de Bergerac. (pp. xxiii-xxiv)
Dennis then re-emphasizes his point that though there
in Anglia, X, 1888, and Anglia, XV, 1892. Eddy in his
Critical Study, pp. 51-52, calls them "labored attempts to
trace half a hundred miscellaneous passages in Gulliver,
principally to the works of Godwin and Cyrano, though other
possible sources are not excluded where they can be con
scripted for the purpose of robbing Swift of any claim to
originality. Another German, Paul Thierkopf, contributed
"Swift's Gulliver und seine franzbsichen VorgHnger," Dreis-
sigster Jahresbericht liber die Guericke Schole in
Magdeburg. Magdeburg, Baensch, 1899.
65
may be points of resemblance between Gulliver and the ear
lier Voyages Tmaginaires. such resemblances do not detract
from Swift's essential originality.
Leslie Stephen in his Swift. published in 1903, makes
the usual bow to Swift's antecedents, but opens a somewhat
broader area for inquiry, suggesting a study of affinities
rather than narrow source relationships:
Gulliver's Travels belongs to a literary genus full
of grotesque and anomalous forms. Its form is derived
from some of the imaginary travels of vriiich Lucian's
True History--itself a burlesque of some early travel
lers ' tales--is the first example. But it has an affin
ity also to such books as Bacon's Atlantis and More’s
Utopia; and again to later philosophical romances like
Candide and Rasselas; and not least, perhaps to the
ancient fables, such as Reynard the Fox, to which Swift
refers in the Tale of a Tub. It may be compared,
again, to the Pilgrim's Progress, and a whole family
of allegories. (pp. 174-175)
By 1904, still another line of inquiry is suggested
by A. C. L. Brown who notes resemblances between Gulliver's
adventures in Brobdingnag and an Irish folktale entitled
"The King of the Lepracane's Journey to Emania, and How
the Death of Fergus MacLeide, King of Llidia was Brought
About." Brown made no source claim for Swift's familiarity
with this bit of Irish folk-lore, but simply noted a number
of remarkable parallels such as the palace scenes, the
dismay at the offensive odors of the giants, and the
66
introduction of a giant's dwarf to emphasize the size of
4 2
the traveller.
In the years before Eddy a few other specific sources
were suggested. A particularly significant one was that
offered in 1917 by Elbert N. S. Thompson, who submitted
that
the satire at the expense of the scientists and
philosophers in the third book of Gulliver's Travels
may have been suggested by Brown's Amusements
Serious and Comical . . . The scientists whom Gulliver
found wasting their time in speculations were very
similar to these.43
^ Modern Language Notes. XIX (1904), 45-46.
^"Source for Ridicule of Learning by Tom Brown,"
Modem Language Notes, XXXII (1917), 96-97. Eddy, Critical
Study, p. 65, states: "Brown's influence in Gulliver may
be summed up as follows: several hints for Lagado, includ
ing its division into departments of experimental science
and speculative learning; the method used by the Laputan
tailor to measure Gulliver for a suit of clothes by means
of a quadrant; the indictment of a man as an intemperate
animal, in contrast with the gentler disposition of the
horse." Eddy also believes Swift "owes a considerable debt
to the style of Thomas Brown" who "in turn was steeped in
the satiric humor of Lucian and Rabelais" (p. 46). Others
included J. H. Hanford's "Plutarch and Dean Swift," in which
he offered Plutarch's dialogue between Ulysses and one of
Circe's swine as an interesting parallel to Swift's Voyage
to the Houyhnhnms, Modem Language Notes. XXV (June 1910),
181-184; and Robert Forsythe*s "Study of the Plays of
D'Urfey," which proposed Tom D'Urfey's Wonders in the Sun,
or the Kingdom of the Birds (1706), a work derived in
great part from the fantastic voyages by Bergerac, long
claimed as sources for Gulliver« Western Reserve Bulletin.
New Series, XIX (May 1916), 152.
67
The following year, E. B. Reed pursued the influence of
Brown, noting his direct influence as a translator of Gel-
li's Circe and pointing out the parallels between Circe
and the Voyage to the Houvhnhnms. particularly the parallel
attacks on physicians, luxurious living, and drunkenness
In the year 1921, Eddy began a decade of contribu
tions. His first was an attempt to define the precise
relationship between Gulliver and Lucian's True History.
In the process, he found many parallels, but more impor
tant, he was able to show that in Letter XIII, January 4,
1710/11, in the Journal to Stella. Swift made the follow
ing entry:
"I went to Bateman's the bookseller . . . and bought
three little volumes of Lucian in French, for our
Stella." . . . [This purchase] contained "a third and
fourth part written by D'Ablaneourt himself by way of
sequel.^
In these, the traveller visits a land of pygmies,
describes a neighboring land of giants, makes a long visit
^'^Gulliver's Travels and Tom Brown." Modem Language
Notes. 33, (January 1918), 57-58. The reference is cited
in Eddy's bibliography appended to the Critical Study,
but not referred to in his text. Timpe deals with it in
Study, pp. 14-15.
^"A Source for Gulliver's Travels." Modem Language
Notes. XXXVI (November 1921), 420.
68
to a land of prosperous and wisely governed animals who
have as their subjects a nearby group of savage, degenerate
human beings. The animal king resembles the governor of
the Houyhnhnms in his resentment of the indignities suf
fered by his generic cousins in the land of the visitor
and the visitor in turn is, like Gulliver, convinced of the
superior vitues of animals. Eddy finds the parallel with
the land of the pygmies most significant:
Unlike the little savages who attack Hercules in the
classical legend, but like the Lilliputians, the pyg
mies of D'Ablancourt are governed by human laws, ruled
by a benevolent king, skilled in waging war, and highly
ingenious in the management of their domestic affairs.
To be sure the race is idealized, not ridiculed, as it
is by Swift; but it is a source for the fiction and
not the satire that we are seeking in D'Ablancourt.
There is also something of Swift's careful proportions
in the extended and detailed account of pygmy life.
The minute rations consumed, the diminutive utensils
used, are all in strict conformity with the scale of
life. The traveller is entertained with a vaudeville
performance . . . which lacks only the tightrope walk
ing exhibited at the court of Lilliput. In short, no
other account of pygmy life gives anything like such
a parallel to Swift. Yet D'Ablancourt has never been
mentioned in connection with Swift. (p. 422)
The following year Eddy offered a brief footnote to
the Lucian influence, asserting that it was not confined
to the True History but is evident in two other satires,
both included in D'Ablancourt's translation: Lucian's
Icaromenippus. or A Voyage to Heaven and Lucian's satire On
69
Mourning for the Dead.^
In 1923 Eddy published his definitive Gulliver1s
Travels: A Critical Study. Here he developed elaborate
analyses of the ihilosophic and Imaginary Voyages. The
link between Gulliver and the Philosophic Voyage he finds
"not in abstract philosophy but in satire" (p. 40) and
concludes that Swift's contribution to the genre are (1)
the originality of "first reducing and then magnifying the
proportions of life to reveal its pettiness and its ugli
ness together" (p. 48), and (2) condemnation of man in a
state of nature rather than just civilized man in his com
parison of man and animals (p. 49).
In the chapter dealing with Swift's actual borrowings
from literary sources, Eddy concurs with Scott's citing of
Philostratus's Imagines. recapitulates his own work on the
influence of Lucian, particularly via his translator
D'Ablancourt, and of Rabelais, and concludes that "Swift's
actual borrowings of incident and idea from the Fantastic
"a Source for Gulliver's Travels." Modern Language
Notes. XXXVII (June 1922), 353-355. The same year in **Rab-
elals, A Source for Gulliver's Travels." Modern Language
Notes. XXXVII (November 1922), 416-418, Eddy found the
usual parallels between Rabelais and Gulliver less convinc
ing of influence than Swift's ability to quote Rabelais "off
hand in his correspondence, with verbal accuracy," and con-
70
Voyages of Cyrano are more extensive and more numerous
than from any other source” (p. 61). He presents new
evidence of the influence of Cyrano's second romance,
Histoire comique du soleil.^ which he feels had been either
ignored or dealt with incorrectly by Dunlop, Borkowsky,
Churton Collins, and Dennis (pp. 62-63), and recapitulates
the evidence of influence by Tom Brown, and the description
of the storm from Sturmy's Mariner's Magazine. He then
discredits Churton Collins's claim that "several strokes
for the Yahoos were borrowed from the Travels of Sir
Thomas Herbert," Honncher's claims for Godwin's Voyage of
Domingo Gonzales. and Borkowsky's "labored attempt to prove
eluded that Swift, "quoted Rabelais’ ridicule of scien
tific projectors, and reproduced it in Gulliver's Travels"
(p. 418).
^Eddy finds the Histoire significant chiefly as "the
model for the withering satire that is heaped on Gulliver
by the Houyhnhnms (p. 63). The same material appeared
under "Cyrano de Bergerac and Gulliver's Travels," Modem
Language Notes, XXXVIII (June 1923), 344-^45. Harold
Williams challenges Eddy's belief in the Histoire comique
du soleil as a source for the fourth voyage. Says Wil
liams, ^Anything can be proven with some ingenuity. A
Dr. Bantley, otherwise possibly Dr. Arbuthnot, succeeded
in demonstrating, with some touches of excellent humour,
in Critical Remarks on Cant. Gulliver’s Travels (1735),
that the Houyhnhnms and their country were well known to
classical authors from the most ancient times" (1926
Edition, p. 485).
71
that Swift used the His to ire des Sevarambes and the Voyage
of Jacques Sadeur," not to mention the "parody of scholar -
ship" involved in Borkowsky's effort to prove indebtedness
to More's Utopia (pp. 66-67). In place of these spurious
claims, Eddy offers three possible sources as yet unsub
stantiated save by rather striking internal parallels:
Holberg's Klimius« Joseph Hall's Mundus Alter et Idem
(1610), and a Japanese work entitled Wasobiyoe, published
in 1774 but probably current centuries before (pp. 67-70).
Many of these claims are, as promised in Eddy's "Preface,"
developed more fully in the second half of his study, that
devoted to each of Gulliver's four voyages.
In the section on Lilliput he considers "other Pygmy
Commonwealths in Literature" and the "Philosophy of the
Voyage to Lilliput"--as the relativity of human life and
its values— which he believes may have been derived from
Berkeley's New Theory of Vision (pp. 101-104). The section
on Brobdingnag begins with a review of the literature of
giants and admits from the start, "the only thesis that I
hope to prove is the negative one, that the giants in
Gulliver's Travels do not represent any single, local
tradition" (p. 116). They do, however, resemble the giants
of a number of independent stories. Though Eddy rejects
the giants of classical mythology and is only moderately
interested in the giants of Germanic tradition, he cites
with considerable enthusiasm A. C. L. Brown's proposal of
the Irish folk story of King Fergus MacLeide, mentioned
above on page 65. But it is the giant races in earlier
Imaginary Voyages which most impress Eddy: those in Lucian's
True History, even those in the rejected Godwin's Voyage
of Gonzales to the Moon, but more particularly those in
Cyrano's Histoire comique de la lune in which he finds
48
many parallels. Several parallels are also discovered in
"The Adventures of Hassan al Bassri," from the Arabian
Nights. which were translated from French into English just
two years before the publication of Gulliver (pp. 129-133).
Eddy's concern with sources in Brobdingnag outside of giant
literature includes the fable of the Rukh or Roc and the
^®Pages 126-129. Harold Williams, 1926 Edition, p.
468, notes that all three of these sources relate the pres
ence of a giant race on the moon. He dismisses Lucian's
monsters as contributing nothing to Swift's picture, and
Godwin's little, but he summarizes Eddy's parallels between
Cyrano and Swift: "The discussion of the King's scholars
on the nature and origin of Gulliver has a close analogy
in Cyrano's romance. Gulliver is kept in a box, Cyrano
in a cage; both are shown for money; both perform tricks
in public; both are fatigued by their performances; both
have large nuts thrown at them; each becomes a pet of the
Queen; both notice that the birds of the country have no
fear of them; both are carried away by an enormous bird."
73
literature of domestic dwarfs. As a source for the Brob-
dingnagian dwarf, he suggests some of the anecdotes of
domestic dwarfs in E. J. Wood's collection, Giants and
Dwarfs. and one Jeffrey, the court dwarf of Charles I, who
enjoyed sufficient contemporary fame to be selected by
Thomas Fuller for his History of the Worthies of England.
1662 (pp. 140-143).
The treatment of sources of Brobdingnagian philosophy
is far more complex than that of the Lilliputians, because
Eddy sees two aspects in Swift's point of view:
(1) There is no precedent anywhere in the literature
of the Philosophic Voyage for this magnification
of the human race or for the allegorical use of a
giant race to represent mankind. Nor do I know of
any giant story of any kind or origin in which
giants stand for man. (p. 148)
(2) The condemnation of Gulliver by the giants occu
pies the later chapters of Brobdingnag, . . . The
general situation is no longer one of allegory,
but one of the contrast between the traveller and
his hosts. This situation, almost the invariable
rule in the earlier Philosophic Voyages, exists
* - n Gulliver only in the latter part of Brobdingnag
and throughout the Voyage to Houyhnhnmland. (p.
152)
Eddy's treatment of Book III is the least effective of
his efforts. Falling prey to the assumption that it is an
inferior effort, he is inclined to dismiss it with scathing
remarks. For example, in discussing the attack on theo
74
retical science In Laputa, he asserts: "I can find no
literary source or analogue, and conclude It must have
been Inspired by one of Swift's ideocyncracies" [sic.],
(p. 158). Or, again, he rejects the, to him, ridiculous
concept of the Flying Island with the comment:
The explanation, such as it is, seems to be that
Swift felt obliged to sustain the marvellous inter
est already created in the first two voyages; and,
having nothing apt in mind, proceeded to copy the
aerial adventure in Lucian's True History, from which
he had already borrowed heavily for Gulliver, (p. 158)
Eddy views the Struldbrugs with greater enthusiasm,
and for the hideousness of old age, he finds possible
models in such diverse material as the myth of Tithonus,
the story of the Wandering Jew, Lucian's On Mourning for
the Dead and his sixth Dialogue of the Dead (p. 165-168).
For the concept of a journey to a race of immortals, he
offers parallels from Phillippe d'Alcripe's La nouvelle
fabrique des exceliens traits de verite, from the ubiqui
tous Klimius, and from the Japanese Wasobiyoe. He concedes
that the parallels are not perfect, but they are offered to
show the prevalence of the ideas (pp. 168-170).
Eddy connects The Voyage to the Houyhnhnms with the
Beast-Fable, such as Aesop or Reynard the Fox, but notes
that the beast-fable literature eschews any hint of the
75
superiority of animals to man (p. 175). For this aspect
of the Houyhnhnms, he points (1) to the tradition of
Ulysses and the Beasts, particularly as it appeared in
Plutarch's Morals, in James Howell's The Parly [sic] of
Beasts (1660), and in C. B. Gelli's Circe as translated by
49
Tom Brown in 1702; and (2) to the Beast-Utopia—
an Imaginary voyage, purporting to be the veritable
account of a journey made by one or more Europeans to
an ideal commonwealth of animals, whose virtuous and
healthful life offers a striking contrast to the
comparatively degenerate state of the human race.
(P. 183)
As Beast-Utopia models for Gulliver, Eddy selects passages
from d'Ablaneourt's Isle des animaux and de Bergerac's
Histoire des oiseaux and concludes that in the pages from
the Histoire, "which have failed to catch the attention of
critics, we have the most important source for the satire
in the last voyage of Gulliver" (p. 190).
Eddy's concern is broader than the establishment of a
limited number of authenticated sources. He desires to
place Gulliver in its literary context, linking it with a
49
Pages 175-181. Harold Williams, however, remains
unconvinced: "Parallels between these and other possible
literary sources, and the Voyage to the Country of the
Houyhnhnms are adduced by W. A. Eddy (pp. 178-187); but the
resemblances are slight and inconclusive" (1926 Edition,
p. 485).
broad and ancient tradition. Yet, the least successful
part of the book is his attempt to create a rather arbi
trary classification of voyage literature to bring order
out of the chaos in which he feels Imaginary Voyages have
50
existed (pp. 7-14). This defect is related to his cen
tral failure in interpretation of Gulliver, the assumption
that Gulliver should be classified as an imaginary voyage of
philosophic intent in the same sense as those of Cyrano.
In such a classification, Eddy misses Swift's parodying of
the tradition and his essential disagreement with its
glorification of natural man and natural religion. These
defects are, however, more than offset by the exhaustive
ness of the sources and parallels considered. With the
exception of his omission of Dampier and Defoe, Eddy did a
remarkable job of taking the hints of his predecessors,
adding his own substantiated sources, and then opening up a
wide range of comparisons. At the same time, he discrim-
^Bhilip Gove, The Imaginary Voyage in Prose Fiction
(New York, 1941%pp.102-109, questions Eddy's success in this
aim and takes hhn to task for inconsistencies in defini
tion. But the average reader is more likely to be annoyed
by the rather intrusive paraphernalia and the arbitrary
elimination of materials of seeming relevance, particularly
Defoe and Deunpier, which fail to meet the test of philo
sophic purposes.
77
inates between proved source and interesting parallel.
The only other additions to the growing mass of pos
sible sources accumulated during the twenties were Eddy's
suggestion of the Theatre Italien,^ and Eugene Rovillain's
submission of "Adventures of the Physician Abu Bakkr," in
the Tartarian Tales of Thomas Simon Gueulette as a source
52
for the incident of the burning palace in Lilliput.
Although the twenties and the thirties were the hey
day of source studies, a few critics objected to the head
long race for new particulars. Early in the thirties,
three critics ennunciated words of caution to all source
hunters. In 1932, Harold Williams inveighed against "the
eager search in hidden corners for similarities of phrase
-*^-In 1929, he pointed out that students of the satire
in Imaginary Voyages had failed to notice three or four
comedies in Le Theatre Italien, which clearly belong to
the genre, even though the fiction of a geographical voy
age is gratuitous and incidental." The voyages noted by
Eddy are Arlequin Sauvage (1721), Timon le Misanthrope
(1722), L'Isledes (1725), and l'lsle des Talens (1743), but
only Arlequin Sauvage is singled out for real comparison
with Gulliver. ^Gulliver's Travels and Le Theatre Italien,"
Modern Language Notes, XLIX (June 1929), 356.
^"Ned Ward and 'Lilliput,'" Notes and Queries.
CLVIII (1930), 149.
78
or narrative [which] may easily become a mistaken pas
time ^ he goes on to point out which of the books
frequently adduced as sources actually existed in Swift's
library. Unfortunately, Williams appears a bit capricious
in his use of knowledge about Swift's library, stating in
one instance:
It is possible that Swift may have read these fantas
tic voyages [Cyrano's Histoire de la lune and Histoire
du soleill. The fact remains that they seem never to
have been among his own books; and this certainly weak
ens the evidence adduced. (pp. 90-91)
In another instance he states:
Nor is it necessary to suppose that Swift drew his
conception of the superiority of animals to man, in
his fourth Voyage, from the dialogues between Elysses
and Gryllus in Plutarch's Moralia, although he knew
his Plutarch and possessed his works, (p. 92)
However, his warning is justified. Minutiae were in danger
of passing for scholarship.
W. D. Taylor's warning is really a reiteration of
the originality of Swift with which Dennis had begun in
1899. While admitting the literary similarities between
Swift and Lucian, he stresses the "weight and drive" in
Swift's work, which distinguished it from Lucian's. ^ And,
53pean Swift's Library (Cambridge, England, 1932),
p. 88.
^ Jonathan Swift: A Critical Essay. (London, 1933) ,
p. 3.
79
while much in Gulliver may have been suggested by the
preceding imaginary voyages, Taylor says:
It is not this that strikes one. It is rather that
being an imaginary voyage it should be so new and
original. Take the incidents . . . twenty-two in "A
Voyage to Lilliput." Of these even the most zealous
source-hunter cannot maintain that more than one is
directly borrowed from an imaginary voyage. (p. 213)
Again, he remarks on the difference in effect between
Cyrano and Gulliver:
Cyrano protests in his first chapter that he is going
to tell a true story, then kicks reality away from
him and flies into the marvellous. The grave, good-
natured Gulliver speaks with an air of conviction
throughout. (p. 214)
Thus, as he reviews many of the sources offered for Gulli
ver, Taylor marvels more at the differences than at the
similarities. The same year, 1933, Huntington Brown in his
Rabelais in English Literature, concludes, "No critic,
indeed, can well overlook the influence of Rabelais," but
he adds that "its extent has sometimes been exaggerated."^
The critics of the thirties failed to heed these
voices, and many relatively minor sources were offered.^
^(Cambridge, Mass., 1933), pp. 161-169.
56
R. W. Frantz, "Swift's Yahoos and the Voyages,"
Modern Hiilology. XXIX (August 1931), 49-57; George Mc
Cracken, "Homerica in Gulliver's Travels." Classical
80
One great contribution, however, was made in this decade:
Willard Bonner's Captain William Dampier: Buccaneer-Author.
In this work, Bonner makes a clear claim for the frequently
mentioned, but little explored, relationship between
Gulliver and Dampier. That Swift not only read widely in
travel literature but also had specific knowledge of Dam
pier is immediately established (pp. 158, 160-164). Bonner
warns, however, against too glib an assumption that simi
larity of style proves stylistic discipleship. Rather, "It
is in elements other than style that the influence of
Dampier may best be noticed" (p. 164). Bonner finds both
Gulliver and Captain Peacock of Bristol, whom Gulliver
meets at Teneriff early in Book IV, to be lineal descend
ants of Dampier. But the most striking evidence offered by
Bonner is the similarity between the four voyages of
Dampier and those of Gulliver. The following table (p. 167)
tells the story:
Journal, XXIX (April 1934), 535-538; G. S. McClue, "A Sev
enteenth Century Gulliver," Modern Language Notes. L (Jan
uary 1935) 32-34; F. S. Rockwell, "A Probable Source for
Gulliver's Travels," Notes and Queries, C1XIX (1935),
131-133; A. W. Secord, ’’ Gulliver and Dampier," Modern
Language Notes, LI (March 1936), 159; and D. E. Baugham,
"Swift s Source of the Houyhnhnms Reconsidered," English
Literary History, V (1938), 207-210.
81
Dampier Gulliver
1. To the South Sea and
around the world with
the buccaneers in sever
al ships, 1681-1691.
(Coasted the northern
shore of New Holland.)
II. To New Holland in the
"Roebuck," 1699-1701.
(Met the "Antelope.")
III. To the South Sea and
around the world in the
"St. George," 1703-
1707.
IV. To the South Sea and
around the world in the
"Duke" and "Dutchess,"
1708-1711.
I. To New Holland (Lilli
put) in the "Antelope,"
1699-1702.
II. To Alaska (Brobdingnag)
in the "Adventure,"
1702-1706. (Coasted
northern shore of New
Holland.)
III. To Pacific islands near
Japan (Laputa, etc.) in
the "Hopewell," 1706-
1710.
IV. To New Holland (Land of
the Houyhnhnms) in the
"Adventure," 1710-1715.
Even the dates of the voyages have a striking simi
larity. But more interesting is the fact that Gulliver's
voyage to Lilliput, made in the good ship "Antelope," began
at Bristol on May 4, 1699, and was to end in East Indies,
the route being presumably by way of the Cape of Good Hope;
while Dampier, sailing for New Holland, also in 1699, in
the "Roebuck" meets on the third of June off the Cape of
Good Hope the "Antelope" of London bound for the East
82
Indies (p. 168). Bonner records further similarities in
the descriptions of weather and prevailing winds during
Gulliver's course to Brobdingnag and Dampier's to New
Holland, and in the criticisms voiced by Gulliver and Dam
pier regarding map makers in their time. Finally, Bonner
substantiates the claims of Frantz that the originals of
the Yahoos might be found in the travel literature of the
time, particularly that of Dampier. Since Dampier1s
accounts of the Hottentots of New Holland appear in mater
ial, which Swift actually read, the material may well have
entered into his descriptions. In short, Bonner concludes:
The actual mention of Dampier and Moll, the character
of Captain Peacock of Bristol, the parallel between
Dampier*s four voyages and Gulliver's, the details
of Gulliver's voyage to Brobdingnag, his remarks
about the errors of the extant maps, his fondness
for New Holland, and his general knowledge of it,
point unmistakably to D a m p i e r .^7
The pattern of the forties followed that of the
thirties: several minor contributions and one major work,
John Ross'8 Swift and Defoe: A Study in Relationship.^
^Page 180. R. Athill in an article entitled "Old
Dampier." English. X (Spring 1955), 124-127, underscores
the content of Bonner and praises the objective style of
Dampier and the irony that this practical buccaneer is now
remembered as a writer "and one who unwittingly influenced
the writing of such diverse masterpieces as Robinson Crusoe.
Gulliver's Travels, and The Ancient Mariner."
58(Berkeley, California, 1941).
83
As in the case of Dampier, the literary connection between
Swift and Defoe had been much mentioned though little
explored. The sole link between Defoe and Gulliver, Ross
finds to be not Robinson Crusoe, but Defoe's Consolida
tor.^ He regrets that Eddy ignored the claims made by
Defoe's biographers concerning the Consolidatorand,
although he appreciates Baker's treatment of the presumed
debt of Gulliver (History of the Novel, p. 142), he dis
agrees with Baker's assumption of stylistic indebtedness.^^
59
Ross acknowledges that he is hardly the first to
note the relationship. Walter Wilson in 1830 had commented
in a footnote on Swift's use of hints of ideas from The
Consolidator. , particularly in Laputa. In 1839, William
Chadwick had referred to it as the model upon which Swift
"moulded his Gulliver," and Paul Dottin, in 1924, had made
a similar comment on the likeness. But observes Ross,
"None of them demonstrates his large claim to indebted
ness" (pp. 72-73).
^Eddy, Critical Study, p. 29.
61
Page ix. Ross also points out that the circum
stantial method was hardly Defoe's invention, having ap
peared in such diverse books as Pilgrim's Progress and Ned
Ward's London Spy, and that the empnasis placed on Defoe's
mastery of realistic and circumstantial details has led,
by the chronological accident of the publication dates of
Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver, to the misapprehension that
Defoe was the first in the field, leaving Swift to adopt
his method. But asserts Ross, Swift actually had little to
learn in this regard from Crusoe. for "Swift had used the
method as early as 1699 in Mrs. Frances Harris's Petition"
(P. 71).
84
Ross finds much more acceptable the precise claim for a
portion of The Consolidator made in 1937 by Marjorie
62
Nicholson and Nora M. Mohler. After noting Lucian's
voyages to the moon, they find "an even more immediate
source" for Swift's Flying Island in Defoe's concern for
the theme of flight to which he turned his attention in
1705, "producing at least three works in rapid succession,"
of vAiich only The Consolidator contained the idea of a fly
ing chariot to carry men to the moon (p. 426).
Ross establishes that while The Consolidator owes
something to the tradition of moon voyages established by
Lucian and Cyrano (p. 38), or perhaps even to a miraculous
healing island of Irisn myth (p. 74), its particular sig
nificance is that Defoe's lunar world is intended to pos
sess exact resemblance to England, and that his flying
machine, used to transport human freight from earth to the
moon, symbolizes the English Government--its two wings
being the two houses of Parliament; its individual feath
ers, the members of Parliament; and one very large feather,
the Prime minister. As Nicholson and Mohler say, "Defoe
^ " S w i f t ' s 1 Flying Island' in the Voyage to Laputa,"
Annals of Science. II, 1937.
85
alone, of all Swift's predecessors, suggested a flying
chariot which also involved political satire" (p. 426).
Ross shows in some detail how Swift took over Defoe's
rather clumsy imaginative device and perfected it. De
foe's flying machine had a multiple function: as a means of
transportation to a superior civilization, as an example
of the contemptible intellectual flights of wits, philos
ophers and freethinkers, as the normal process of English
government "when following a desirable and satisfactory
course," and as the actual course of English government
during the attempts of the Stuarts to achieve an undesir
able absolutism (p. 75). Obviously, these variant meanings
destroyed the possibility of any coherent focus. Swift's
concept of Laputa eliminated the extraneous and restored
the focus. He retained the concept of a governmental body
and took over the notion of a moving body hovering over
those whom it rules, but he eliminated the distracting
element of a vehicle used as a means of transportation to
the moon.
Ross's discussion is a very salutary sort of criti
cism, which relates source citing to broader artistic
86
concerns. ^ It also marks a significant reversal of the
traditional view that Swift and Defoe are similar as iron
ists and as masters of circumstantial detail. The social
gap between the two men, which Ross postulates as an explan
ation for the differences in these and other elements of
artistic craftsmanship, is, perhaps, subject to re-evalua-
tion on the basis that it conceives of class lines and
attitudes as more rigid than, in fact, they were in the
eighteenth century. However, the substitution of idea for
style as the basis of Defoe's influence makes a definite
Louis Landa in "Swift and Natural Science Reviewed,"
Ihilological Quarterly. XXI (April 1942), 222, however,
is not sure of Rosses conclusions regarding the similari
ties between Swift and Defoe, which lie a bit beyond the
actual establishment of source relationships: "Hie least
satisfactory part of the study is the examination of
Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels for similarities on
the assumption that in their masterpieces we find 'the
essential Defoe and the essential Swift' and that simi
larities between these works are therefore particularly
significant. Yet most of the similarities pointed out seem
to me to be less significant than incidental or superfi
cial; for example, absence of feminine interest, of sex,
of any emphasis 'on the problems arising from the relation
ship of the sexes' (this significant of the author of Moll
Flanders and RoxanaJ); both the heroes are ordinary English
men, simple, uncomplicated, without 'any significant inner
psychological conflict'; both works project the same
universal problem: man in a neutral or antagonistic envir
onment struggling for existence. I submit that an inter
pretation of Gulliver as Everyman struggling for survival
is false and not at all consonant with Swift's intention."
87
contribution to the growing structure of possible source
relet ionsh ips.
In the same year as Ross's reconsideration of a long
acknowledged influence, John Moore introduced "A New Source
for Gulliver. a French 'Imaginary Voyage* of the 'Realistic'
type, the Voyages et Avantures de Jacques Masse." Moore
attempts to convince the reader of four explicit resem
blances^^ plus the cumulative effect of such general
resemblances as:
. . . matter-of-fact style and the general air of
realism, in the storm by which the hero's ship is
driven out of its course to an unknown country between
Africa and Australia, in the hero's separation from
his shipmates, in the almost complete destitution in
which he arrives in a strange country, in his fond-
64
Studies in Philology. XXXVII (January 1941), 66-80.
(1) Both Gulliver and Masse are ship's surgeons who, find
ing their income inadequate on land, decided to travel and
see the world, (2) Masse's unknown country contained in
the King's Park some animals called Pol^s, which offer
hints of both the Yahoos and Houyhnhnms, (3) The King of
the imaginary country lectures against the use of firearms
and against the horror and futility of war, rather in the
manner of the King of Brobdingnag and of Gulliver's master
among the Houyhnhnms, (4) Elements lacking in Rabelais as
models for Gulliver's putting out the fire in the voyage
to Lilliput--the fire's being in the apartment of an
Empress and due to the neglect of a waiting-woman, the
extinguishing being, in part at least, by the efforts of
the hero of the narrative, who must then flee from the
country, the alarm at night, the ladders, the quest of
water--all appear in Masse's Voyage.
88
ness for detailed statistics, in his interest in a
new language, in his entertainment at the King’s court,
in his skill in mechanics, and in the grave mockery
of the argumentative passages in which the European
traveller is put to shame. (p. 74)
It is a convincing array, and when the next year
Philip Gove offered ’’ Gildon's 'Fortunate Shipwreck, or a
Description of New Athens,' being an Account of the Laws,
Manners, Religion, and Customs of that Country; by Morris
Williams, Getn. who resided there above Twenty Years," as
background for Gulliver, he stated that he would include as
a true source at least one passage from Massee before any
from Fortunate Shipwreck.^
Other source ascriptions in the forties included
Ashley Montagu's brief for Tyson's Orang-Outang as an over-
66
looked source for the Yahoos and Margaret Grennau's
^Review of English Studies. XXVIII (October 1942),
476. Gove is not so concerned to establish a precise
legalistic defense of a particular source as to present an
interesting predecessor, which may have been a part of the
material almost unconsciously assimilated by Swift in his
reading.
^"Tyson's Orang-Outang. Sive Home Svlvestris. and
Swift* 8 Gulliver's Travels." PMLA. LIX (March 1944), 85.
Montagu believed his "essay necessitated by Eddy's erro
neous account of Tyson's Essay Orang-Outang. Sive Homo
Svlvestria." In his discussion of pygmy commonwealths,
Eddy had suggested that Swift probably had read Tyson's
"Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients," (1699)
89
discussion of "Lilliput and Leprecan," in which she details
Swift's "Celtic preoccupation with the very little and the
very big."^ Montagu's article develops with the usual
detailed evidence, but Miss Grennau's approach is less
in which Dr. Tyson, Master of Arts and Doctor of Medicine,
Cambridge, desired to prove the pygmies to be "only a
creature of the brain, produced by a warm and wanton
imagination, and that they never had any existence or
habitation" (p. 82). Montagu suggests that Eddy must
have read only a reprint of the essay issued separately in
1894 and hence did not know the full work. It is Montagu's
contention that Tyson's Orang-Outang gave a detailed
description and account of the habits of a young chimpan
zee, which had been brought from lower West Africa to
England and, which, according to Montagu, Tyson felt to
be "the animal which in the whole kingdom of animate Nature
stood nearest to man, that in the Great Chain of Being it
constituted the link between man and the lower animals"
(p. 85). But, in the words of Montagu, "More important to
the student of Gulliver," Tyson suggests that "it was upon
just such animals as this that the Ancients had based their
stories of pygmies" (p. 85). Since there is a reference to
Tyson's volume in one of the works of the Scriblerus Club
(An Essay of the Learned Martinus Scriblerus. Concerning
the Origin of Sciences. Written to the Most Learned Dr.
---— -— F.R.S.. From the Deserts of Nubial tracing "the
beginnings of the arts and sciences in the activities of
apes and monkeys" (p. 8 6 ), and since Tyson's Orang-Outang,
"was the only work in which so many facts could be found
collected together" (p. 8 6 ), Montagu concludes that Tyson's
Orang-Outang must be a source for the Yahoos. Moreover,
the picture of "Tyson's Pygmie, The First Plate of the
Orang-Outang" is quite similar to the description of the
Yahoos in Chapter II of the Voyage to the Houyhnhnms.
^ Journal of English Literary History. XII (Septem
ber 1945), 202.
90
‘'scientific." The spirit of her article may be sensed in
her conclusion:
In proposing that the Irish may have affected Swift
as an artist, I have no wish to labor the case. In
deed to prove by measurement and chart the kind of
influence I would like to suggest would be as pointless
as weighing the thistle-head that Glomar son of Glas
severed from its stalk--and as impossible. It is far
too subtle and pervasive a spirit for that, and such
a marriage of imponderables and statistics would
justly provoke the ironic laughter of Gulliver's cre
ator, in whom pedantry always found a scornful antago
nist. But I do believe that there is a delicate
reflection of the Irish manner in Book One, and perhaps
Swift will be found to owe more to Ireland than the
provocation her misery so amply provided the savage
indignation of the Dean. (p. 202)
Miss Grennau points out the grave limitations of the
pygmy tradition, whether from the ancients or from the
literature of voyages--their presentation of the ugly,
grotesque, subhuman aspects and the omission of any of the
fairy loveliness of the Voyage to Lilliput. Nor is she
reassured by Montagu's identification of pygmy and chim
panzee. While admitting the possible significance of the
pygmy tradition in the genesis of Swift's original idea of
Lilliput, Miss Grennau promotes the Tuath Luchra of very
early Irish literature as the "Celtic Leaven" lacking in
the pygmy tradition (pp. 190-191). She also re-explores
the Irish materials suggested by A. C. L. Brown and Eddy--
The Death of Fergus MacLeide, or the Wanderings of the
91
Tuath Luchra. While both Brown and Eddy are concerned with
the striking resemblances between the adventures of Iubhdan
and Esirt in Eman Mach and those of Gulliver in Brobding
nag, she finds far greater significance in the Fergus
story for the Lilliput adventures.
Although the day of the hunt for particular sources
of particular details is not over by 1950, the interest has
decreased. In 1950, Frank Kermode is still seeking par-
6 8
ticular originals for the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms, ° and
Nicholas Joost presented as a possible source of the story
of the rope-dancers in the third chapter of the Voyage to
Lilliput, a brief story told in Ambrose Philip's Free
thinker , No. 144^^ In 1952, Edward Rosenheim objected to
6 8
"Yahoos and Houyhnhnms," Notes and Queries. CXCV
(July 1950), 317-318. His offering is the vague ethnolog
ical data of Robert Harcourt's Relation of a Voyage to
Guiana (1613, Hakluyt Society, Second Series, No. IX),
whereamong the "divers Nations of several languages"
extant in Guiana, Harcourt describes the Yahios, who like
the Yahoos are not indigenous and appear to be destructive
and lecherous. Even Kermode, however, candidly adds that
they are not "comparable in loathsomeness with Mr. Frantz's
examples" (see above p.79, n. 56). Kermode sees also a
possible connection between the Houyhnhnms and certain
inhabitants of an ancient traveller's tale, the story of
Thebaeus, as recorded by Purchas (Hakluvtus Posthumus.
Glasgow, 1906, I, 340-341).
^"Gulliver and the Free-thinker," Modem Language
Notes. LV (March 1950), 197-199.
Joost's theory and proposed a parallel for the episode in
Swift's own tf Remarks upon a Book Intitled 'The Rights of
the Christian Church, &C. However, the trend in the
fifties, among those interested in discussing sources, is
toward a more creative relationship between source material
and literary interpretation. It is admittedly a trend made
possible by the work of early source finders and textual
critics.
Perhaps the work of William Ewald in The Masks of
Jonathan Swift (1953) will illustrate this more creative
approach. Ewald, for example, reviews the evidence that,
while Swift sticks carefully to his scale in Lilliput and
Brobdingnag, many details, such as Gulliver's dragging
"with great east" fifty of the "largest men of war" of the
Blefuscu fleet or a handkerchief in Brobdingnag, where an
inch equals an English foot, being nearly a foot thick, are
as a result quite incredible. Such errors are not, how
ever, the primary interest of Ewald. He sees these
exaggerations by Gulliver as part of "the satire on the
credibility of voyagers and of men who say they tell the
70"a 'Source' for the Rope-dancing in Gulliver's
TravelsHiilological Quarterly. XXXI (April 1952), 208-
211.
93
truth" (p. 135). Bonner’s parallels between Dampier and
Gulliver, both in virtues and in vices, are seen as making
Gulliver a more lifelike character, yet at the same time,
"they also constitute a subtle burlesque on writers of
travel literature" (p. 128). Or, again, Ewald takes
Eddy's parallel between Lucian and Gulliver--their claims
to veracity in the midst of error, lie, and fantasy--and
shows the artistry of Swift's irony. Textual and source
studies are thus offered as support of Ewald's primary
conception of the satiric character of Gulliver.
An even more obvious example of the submerging of
source investigation in interpretation may be found in
Aline Taylor's "Cyrano de Bergerac and Gulliver's Voyage
to Brobdingnag."^ Mrs. Taylor questions the distinguished
position of Cyrano's Histoire de la Lune in the brief
roster of Swift's "undoubted sources,"^ for the Voyage to
^ Tulane Studies in English. V (1957), 28-82.
72
So viewed by Eddy throughout; Quintana, Mind and
Art, p. 303; H. Williams, Introduction to Gulliver1s
Travels, Oxford Edition, pp. xv-xvi; Ewald, Masks, pp.
128, 1^6, 153. Mrs. Taylor cites several, who have not
entirely agreed: "In 1928, R. E. Bennett . . . expressed
some uneasiness about the evidence for Swift's debt to
Cyrano, and proposed as an intermediary source, D'urfey's
Wonders in the Sun (1706). He concluded, however, that no
94
Brobdingnag, and asserts:
. . . the only similarity between the two works which
survives scrutiny is the general pattern formed by
the sequence of episodes in each--the arrival of a tiny
human traveller among a giant race, his capture by
commoners, his public exhibition, and his arrival at
court where he is subjected to learned discussions
concerning his species, is provided with living quar
ters suitable to his size (a 'box'), or to his species
as currently designated (a monkey-house, or a bird
cage) , and where as a matter of course there are a
King, a Queen, and some Maids of Honor. One looks in
vain for "the unfriendly dwarf* against whose rivalry
Cyrano wins the lunar Queen's favor; for the "enormous
moon-birds" which, like the birds in Brobdingnag, are
at ease in his presence; for the "roc" which bears
him away "in his cage suspended by a cord around its
neck." These details are not derived from the Histoire
de la Lune. (p. 83)
In fairness to Eddy, it should be noted that his errors are
not quite as flagrant as Mrs. Taylor would make them. He,
himself, in an earlier passage (Eddy, p. 21) designates
the queen's dwarf as the Spaniard, Domingo Gonzales. That
Gonzales does not seem a very close counterpart of the
dwarf in Gulliver may be granted, but he does exist in
Cyrano's Histoire de la Lune. As for the missing moon-
influence could be established to invalidate the source
studies of Gulliver made by Mr. Eddy and his predecessors.
In 1932, Sir Harold Williams (Dean Swift's Library, pp.
89-90) expressed some skepticism on the grounds that
Cyrano's voyages 'seem never to have been among [Swift's]
own books, and this certainly weakens the evidence adduced.'
In 1941, however, he accepted Swift's indebtedness."
95
birds and the roc, Eddy has simply confused his footnote
references.^ Of far greater importance, however, is Mrs.
Taylor's positive contribution. She describes at length
the essential differences between Cyrano and Swift in their
philosophic "envelopes," in their goals, and in their
details. Cyrano's romance presents the plurality of worlds
and the freedom of human nature of the libres-penseurs;
Swift maintains the orthodox dogmas of human pride and
original sin. Cyrano's reason is vindicated by his even
tual renunciation of the principles of Aristotle and he
moves progressively from unintelligible monkey and talking
bird to man and philosopher. Gulliver's reason is not an
explicit issue, as Mrs. Taylor views the matter, but Gul
liver falls progressively lower in the scale of nature and
grace. Even in such details as the comparison of Gulliver's
^ In his section headed "Cyrano's Histoire de la
Lune," Eddy supports his presentation of the moon-birds
with a quotation from the Histoire du Soleil. rather than
from De la Lune (p. 129). The same is true of his refer
ence to the roc. Just how Eddy fell into this error is
puzzling, as he very clearly differentiates the two works
and their respective source contributions in an earlier
section (pp. 61-64). Perhaps, the error arose because he
uses in all his footnotes in the offending section the
title Histoire comique. whereas, in the other sections, he
differentiated the two parts of this work using De la Lune
or Du Soleil as the footnote references.
96
public exhibition and Cyrano's similar exhibition, she
finds differences in both motivation and occasion as well
as evocation of entirely different pictures--"Cyrano*s is
that of a mountebank's dancing monkey; Gulliver's, that of
a human prodigy at the Fairs" (p. 92).
Yet Mrs. Taylor is convinced that Swift knew the work
of Cyrano. It is her purpose merely to reassess the nature
of Swift's indebtedness. Of this she says:
If Swift drew on Cyrano for the sequence of episodes
which composes the framework of Brobdingnag, it was
deliberately, not in the spirit of admiring imitator,
far less of plagiarist--Cyrano's Voyages were too well
known for anyone to "plagiarize" them; it was in the
same spirit that Pope drew on Horace for his Epistle
to Augustus, in the hope, indeed in the full expecta
tion, that his readers would detect the similarity and
would also 'inspect beyond the surface and rind of
things' to discern the differences as well. Without
this recognition of similarity, the Voyage to Brob-
dingnag . . . loses much of its ironic force. (p. 1 0 2 )
In other words, Gulliver's adventures in Brobdingnag de
velop the implications of libertin premises and reduce
these premises to absurdity by measuring them against the
facts of the human condition as seen by a realist. Mrs.
Taylor's article is a fine example of the broader concerns
with which source studies finally became allied. When
William Eddy in the 1920's explored the relationship
between Cyrano and Gulliver, he like others in that period
97
remained bound to rather literal parallels. As a result,
he missed the subtle artistic use of the materials as a
parody of a tradition and to a degree misinterpreted both
Gulliver and the work of C y r a n o .74
To compare Mrs. Taylor's article with that of the
discoverer of Swift's transcription of the storm from
Sturmy's Magazine is to see the development of twentieth
century studies of literary sources from the search for
literal likenesses to the concern for linking literary
sources with artistic values, particularly the ironic
handling, and to the history of ideas. It was perhaps
unfortunate that Swift's verbatim transcription of the
storm was discovered so early, for it encouraged the hope
of finding other equally exact sources and led some to
doubt Swift's originality. The general direction, however,
of twentieth century studies of literary sources has been
three-fold: (1 ) from the detection of new sources to the
authentication and refinement of old claims; (2 ) from the
implication that Swift was simply an eclectic borrower to a
deepening appreciation of his originality in the use of a
wide range of materials; and (3) from a primary concern
^See above, p. 76.
98
with the claims of particular sources to a central concern
with the artistic or philosophical ends which Swift
achieved through the use of source material.
Political sources
From the day of its first publication, readers
recognized that Gulliver’s Travels, besides being a divert
ing tale, was a satire on social and political life. All
of Swift's critics and biographers, from Lord Orrery, have
been interested in its "particular applications." Swift,
himself, made no secret of his belief in the technique of
allegory:
In describing the virtues and vices of mankind, it
is convenient upon every article, to have some eminent
person in our eye, from whence we copy our descrip
tion. 7 5
He also realized the limitations of the method:
Though the present age may understand well enough the
little hints we give, the parallels we draw, and the
characters we describe, yet this will all be lost to
the next. (p. 2 1 1 )
However, he hoped that "they may have curiosity enough to
consult annals, and compare dates, in order to find out"
^Quoted by Sir Charles Firth, "Political Signifi
cance of 'Gulliver's Travels'" in Essays. Historical and
Literary (Oxford, 1938), p. 211.
99
(P. 211).
Those most curious to unravel Swift's allegory In the
twentieth century have been Firth, Case, and Qirenprels,
and their various judgments regarding specific allegorical
meanings appear on the charts which follow. Firth, believ
ing that Gulliver's Travels was written at two different
periods and then patched together, assigns some allusions
to the end of Queen Anne's reign, others to the events in
the reign of George I. He says that the allusions to the
events of the later period are more numerous and that the
references to public events and public personages are, as
is obvious on the accompanying charts, most frequent in
the First and Third Voyages (p. 213). Since Firth's pri
mary purpose is to link specific persons, details, and
events in Gulliver with their counterparts in English and
Irish life between 1713 and 1726, he allows himself few
generalizations. Two of these are significant. First, he
sees a movement from the specific to the more general refer
ence as Swift progresses from Book I through Book II and
into Book IV, and, second, he observes a movement from
preoccupation with English politics in Book I to a deepen
ing concern with Irish social conditions, evident in Book
III. By Book IV, "Swift is no longer content with condemn-
Book One
Firth
1919
Case
1945
Lilllput
Tramecksan or High Heels
Slameck8an or Low Heels
Big-Endians
Little-Endians
Emperor of Lilliput
Empress of Lilliput
Heir to Crown of Lilliput
Bolgolam
Flimnap
Flimnap's skill in rope
dancing
England
Tories and High Church
Whigs and Low Church
(1) Conventional European
Monarch
(2) George I
Nottingham, enemy of Swift
(1714) of Bolingbroke (1721)
Robert Walpole
Walpole's dexterity in
parliamentary tactics and
political intrigue
England
Roman Catholics
Protestants
George X
Anne
Prince of Wales (partial to
Tories)
Nottingham, enemy of Harley
(Oxford)
Robert Walpole
Anne
Book One
Firth
1919
Limtoc
Lalcon
Balmuff
Reldresal
Secret visit to
"Considerable Person
at Court"
Gulliver*s refusal to
subjugate Blefuscu
Friendliness of Gulliver
to Blefuscudian
ambassador8
Gulliver's seeking of
protection of Emperor
of Blefuscu
Carteret, Lord Lieutenant
of Ireland
Bolingbroke1s refusal to
subjugate France
"Treasonable intercourse"
of Bolingbroke and French
ambassadors
Bolingbroke1 8 fleeing to
France
Case
1945
General Stanhope
Duke of Devonshire (?)
Lord Cowper
Viscount Townshend
Marlborough
Tory granting of easy peace
terms to France
Secret understanding between
Tories and French diplomats
Bolingbroke's fleeing to
France
Book One
Firth
1919
Case
1945
Silken threads:
Green
Red
Blue
Flimnap's jealousy of his
wife's affection for
Gulliver
Gulliver
Illegal extinguishing of
Palace fire
"King*8 cushion" breaking
fall of Flimap
Order of the Thistle,
revived by Anne, 1703
Order of Bath, revived
by George I, 1725
Order of the Garter, granted
to Walpole, 1726
Dubious character of
Walpole's first wife, or
Bolingbroke'8 attempt to
win favor of Duchess of
Kendal away from Walpole
(1) Swift
(2) Bolingbroke
Tale of the Tub (Scott,
Dennis, Taylor agreed)
Duchess of Kendal
Problems of Walpole and his
first wife
(1) Oxford and/or Bolingbroke
during latter half of Anne's
reign
(2) Tory administration
Illegal negotiation of Treaty
of Utrecht, 1713, by Tories
102
Book One
Firth
1919
Four Articles of
Impeachment
Blefuscu's harboring of
Big-Endian exiles
Inventory of Gulliver's
possessions
Shipwreck and Gulliver's
captivity
Decree to blind
Gulliver
War between Lilliput and
Blefuscu
Peace treaty between
Lilliput and Blefuscu
Case
1945
Charges vs. Oxford and Boling
broke by Whigs— 1715
French harboring of Jacobites
( ? )
Whig lords' investigation of
William Gregg
Temporary fall of Oxford and
Bolingbroke in 1708
Life exclusion of Oxford and
Bolingbroke from political
activity
War of Spanish Succession
Peace of Utrecht, 1713
Book Two
Firth
1919
King of Brobdingnag
Queen of Brobdingnag
Beggars in Brobdingnag
Glumdalclitch
Book Three
Flying Island of Laputa
Lindalino
Balnibarbi
Grand Academy of Legado
Munodi
Political views of Swift's
party or of Swift
Beggars of Dublin
England, "the harlot"
Ireland under English
domination
Royal Society of London
Viscount Kiddleton, Chancel
lor of Ireland, 1714-1725
Case
1945
English court under George I
(an old view)
Dublin
All of British Isles under
George I and Whigs
Satiric attack on corruption
and stupidity in government
Oxford
104
Book Three
Firth
1919
Case
1945
Lagado
Adamantine bottom of the
Flying Island
Flying Island hovering
over a town in punish
ment
Rebellion of Lindalino
against Laputa
Defenses of city's "high
spires"
'Four large towers"
Dangerously unsuccessful
proposition of "letting
island drop on heads
in Balnibarbi"
"Combustible Fewel"
Dublin London
English "interest" in Monarchy or British constitution
Ireland--the colony of
English descent
English laws in restraint -----------
of Irish trade
Irish vs. English Controversy over Wood's half
pence
----------- Churche8 or churchmen
----------- Privy Council, Grand Jury, and
two houses of Irish Parliament
Successful opposition of -----------
Ireland to Wood's "half
pence"
Resolutions of Irish Parlia- Incendiary pamphlets vs. Wood's
ment and Swift's pamphlets halfpence 105
Book Three
Firth
1919
Strong pull on pieces of -----------
adamant let down from
Laputa
King of Laputa -----------
King1s fondness for art Current rage of opera
and music
"A great Lord at Court, -----------
nearly related to the
King"
Munodi1 8 government — -----------
Munodi's private estate
Allegory of the mill
Old Mill
Current of large river
Case
1945
Irish resistance to King's
measures
George I (theoretical Whig)
George' 8 fondness for music,
especially that of Handel
Prince of Wales (practical
Tory)
Flighty, experimental govern
ment as opposed to sound,
conservative Tory government
Way of life of Tory remnant—
England under Oxford's adminis
tration
Old English fiscal system
English income from agriculture
and trade
106
Book Three
Firth
1919
Club of projectors
Proposed new mill at
a distance
"Modem representative"
of "assenfclies"
Nameless ghost in
Glubdubdrib
Book Four
Yahoos
Houyhnhnms
"Savage old Irish"
Case
1945
Defoe and his abettors
South Sea Company
British Parliament
Sir William Temple (?)
107
108
ing the faults of English or Irish society: he assails the
foundations of the social system" (p. 226), dealing with
abstract principles, rather than their particular manifes
tations .
Arthur Case in his Four Essays on Gulliver's Travels
(1945) made an even more detailed analysis of political
sources and forced reconsideration and choice. Case, more
than Firth, tends to fit his perceptions of allegorical
detail into a theoretical framework. He is convinced that
Swift wrote Gulliver basically as "a treatise on political
theory" (p. 109), and that it is, therefore, essential for
the reader to understand the "politico-sociological nature
of the Travels" (p. 110) which supplies its artistic
unity:
The political allegory of the first voyage is primarily
concerned with the defense of the conduct of the Oxford-
Bolingbroke ministry, and incidentally with an attack
upon the Whigs. In the third voyage the emphasis is
exactly reversed. . . . The focus of this attack is the
Whig ministry under George I, which is accused of
experimentation in the field of government, and of fos
tering experimenters in many other fields.’”
7 6 P a g e go. case does admit later that Swift was more
skillful than Dante in that "his readers might apprehend
the full meaning of his sermon without bothering their
heads about Oxford or Bolingbroke. The parable of the
rebellion of Lindalina could carry its message, and can
109
Case believes that his explanation of the personal and
political allegory has one further advantage, that it
leaves no room for an autobiographical interpretation of
Gulliver1s TraveIs and that it demolishes the arguments of
those who conceive of Swift as the complete egoist.
The differences in detail between Firth and Case may
be seen by reference to the charts. However, it may be
well to point out the most basic differences in allegorical
interpretation. Firth, because of his assumption of an
imperfect integration between the parts of the Voyage to
Lilliput, is content to identify Gulliver first as Swift
himself and later as Bolingbroke; while Case, assuming that
all of the voyages, except for a few insignificant frag
ments, belong to one period of composition, seeks allegor
ical consistency by supposing that Gulliver's career in
Lilliput represents a reasonably chronological rendition
of the joint political fortunes of Oxford and Bolingbroke
during the latter half of Queen Anne's reign (pp. 70-80).
In Book III, Case also endeavors to remove what he regards
as inconsistencies in Firth's interpretation. By identi
fying Balnibarbi as encompassing the entire British Isles
still carry it, to those who care nothing for eighteenth-
century Dublin and Wood's Brass money" (pp. 122-123).
110
and Laputa as the English court, Case eliminates the con
fusion inherent in the picture of the small island of
Laputa (England) flying over the large continent of Balni
barbi (Ireland), which contains in its capital city Lagado
(Dublin) the Grand Academy of Projectors (Royal Society of
London). Having changed Lagado from Dublin to London, Case
also substitutes the former English Prime Minister, Oxford,
for the former Chancellor of Ireland, Viscount Middleton,
as the original of Munodi, former governor of Lagado.
Case adds, also, a number of details not treated by Firth.
The most significant, perhaps, is his explanation of the
allegory of the mill on Munodi's estate, which he equates
with the debacle of the South Sea Company.
Most critics, writing since 1945, have accepted Case's
corrections. Quintana, in the Preface to his 1953 reprint
of Mind and Art, is representative of the majority view.
While he regrets that "Case goes too far and falls headlong
into the so-called intentional fallacy in suggesting that
Swift's central purpose in the Travels was to devise a
'politico-sociological treatise,'" he approves what he
regards as "a partially new and on the whole convincing
interpretation of the political allegory embodied in the
Travels" (p. x). Later, in his Swift: An Introduction
Ill
(1955), Quintana specifically accepts the new identifica
tion of Reldresal with Charles, Viscount Townshend in
preference to Carteret and of Munodi with Oxford rather
than Viscount Middleton; the articles of impeachment drawn
up against Gulliver as the charges made against Oxford and
Bolingbroke after Anne's death; and the interpretation of
the abandoned mill as a symbol of the South Sea enterprise,
"established under Oxford but going down to ruin under the
Whigs" (p. 151). He is less definite in his acceptance of
the adventures of Gulliver in Lilliput as part of "a hidden
history of the Oxford-Bolingbroke Ministry," stating that
some of these "interpretations may . . . be accepted,
without giving up the view that Part I was written at
different times and lacks perfect consistency."^
^Pages 151-152. In this passage, Quintana falls
into the curious error of suggesting as part of Case's
interpretation that "the fire in the Queen's Palace is the
War of the Spanish Succession." What Case says is: "The
story of the fire in the royal palace is Swift's defense of
the Tories' illegal negotiation of the peace . . . [Treaty
of Utrecht]. In a single action, he embodied both the
political and the personal charges against Oxford. Gulli
ver saved the palace, though his conduct was both illegal
and indecent: Oxford saved the state, in return for which
incidental illegalities and indecencies should have been
overlooked" (pp. 75-76). Case's references to the War of
the Spanish Succession involve the total relations between
Blefuscu (France) and Lilliput (England). As he says:
112
There are, of course, a few critics, such as Bernard
Acworth and the biographers to whom he refers, who seem
unaware of the work of Firth and Case. As late as 1947,
Acworth complains:
It is remarkable that in the many and voluminous
biographies of Swift there is hardly a mention of that
monument to human folly, avarice, credulity and ras
cality— the South Sea Bubble. Yet it was this politico-
financial fraud that inspired much of the third of
Gulliver’s travels to the land of the Projectors.
What Acworth reveals is that, in general, critics since
Firth and Case have not been centrally concerned with the
details of contemporary references and allusions. Rather,
they have, as it suited their purposes, used details here
and there to support their generalizations about the
artistry or the ideas of Gulliver.
Since Firth and Case, only one critic, Irvin
". . . the War of the Spanish Succession is described as
'a bloody War [that] hath been carryed on between the two
Empires for six and thirty Moons with various Success'"
(p. 74). How Quintana could have confused Case's interpre
tations of the accident in the Empress's apartment, caused
by the carelessness of a maid, with an allegory of the
international relations of Lilliput is difficult to under
stand, except perhaps on the basis that as Ehrenpreis, not
Case, points out several years later, "The figure of
extinguishing a spreading blaze for stopping by allied
action a tremendous military threat, is ancient, natural
and ubiquitous" (p. 8 8 ).
^®Swift_ (London, 1947), p. 138.
113
Ehrenpreis, has really given attention to the details of
political allegory and he did not conceive of his source
Investigation as a narrow end In Itself. Writing In
1958, he acknowledges his agreement In the main with Case's
refinements upon Firth, but he feels that both "went astray
. . . in comparing Lilliput with the actual events of 1708
to 1715 and not with Swift's versions [chiefly his polit
ical pamphlets] of those events." Moreover, he asserts
that if Case had explored Swift's views more carefully he
would have found:
. . . the political allegory is both more detailed and
less consistent than he believed; that the references
to Bolingbroke (rather than Oxford) control the
fable; and that Swift tended to choose, for dramati
zation, those episodes in which he could identify his
own feelings with those of the ministry.^9
In other words, to Ehrenpreis, Lilliput "is a sublimation
of the suppressed pamphlets and fragments," upon which
Swift had been working from 1714 on (p. 91). Turning to
Book Two, Ehrenpreis finds reflections of Swift's memories
79*rhe Personality of Jonathan Swift (Cambridge,
Mass., 1958), p. 8 6 . Ehrenpreis notes that the Treaty of
Utrecht was Bolingbroke's particular responsibility, and,
moreover, by 1721 and after, Oxford needed no defense,
having been already discharged from his impeachment and
returned to a free role in the House of Lords; while Boling
broke had remained in exile in France from 1715 to 1723,
never regaining his seat in the House of Lords (pp. 88-89).
114
of Moor Park days. Much of the commentary of the King of
Brobdingnag embodies the views of Sir William Temple; the
gracious and brilliant Lady Temple (Dorothy Osborne) Is to
a degree reincarnated In the Queen of the Brobdlngnags;
and Stella (Esther Johnson) may have been a controlling
Image In the creation of the girl giantess, Glumdalclltch
(pp. 92-99). In examining the Fourth Voyage, Ehrenpreis
looks at Swift's previous antl-delstlc expressions, con
cludes that the Houyhnhnms strongly resemble the deists,
and then finds in them some parallels with Viscount Boling-
80
broke. For Book III Ehrenpreis offers a new model for
the King of Laputa, Swift's Irish friend, the Reverend
Thomas Sheridan (pp. 109-113).
Unlike the earlier searcher for parallels between
Gulliver and persons or events in his times, Ehrenpreis is
not seeking positive identification as his primary end:
The King of Brobdingnag is not Sir William Temple; nor
is Thomas Sheridan the King of Laputa. In all the
characters there are elements inconsistent with the
originals that I have put forward. I suggest merely
that the framework of the houyhnhnms' character, for
instance, goes back to Bolingbroke; that the giant
king is derived from Swift's recollections of Temple,
fin
Pages 103-107. Ehrenpreis also offers the interest
ing evidence that Swift once had an English horse named
Bolingbroke, who chanced on one occasion, at least, to
behave more rationally that Swift's Irish servant (pp.107-108).
115
though with many additions and alterations . . .
The most important question is how these observa
tions alter one's reading of Gulliver's Travels.
(P. 114)
For Ehrenpreis, the resemblances support such ideas as
Swift's essentially critical attitude toward the Houyhnhnms
or an understanding of the way in which Swift's imagination
worked. In general, one can say that by the 1950's criti
cal interest in political or historical source identifica
tion for its own sake was pretty well exhausted. The
greater concern was to relate materials to the history of
ideas or an understanding of aesthetic processes.
Sources of names and language
Just when interest in literary, historical, and
political sources appeared to be waning, critical interest
in the sources of the names and languages in Gulliver
suddenly revived.®*- As late as the early forties, most
®*-Earlier work in the field includes J. P. Gilson's
"Notes on the Name of 'Gulliver'" in Henry Morley's edition
of Gulliver (1890); Morley's own discussion in his Preface;
Frederick Bracher's concern for "The Name 'Lemuel Gulli
ver,"* in Huntington Library Quarterly. XII (August 1949),
411-412; Margaret Grennan's discussion of the language of
the Houyhnhnms and the Lilliputians in relation to the
rhythms of Celtic speech in "Lilliput and Leprecan: Gulli
ver and the Irish Tradition," Journal of English Literary
History. XII (September 1945), 188-202; Eric Partridge^s
116
critics were content simply to praise the onomatopoetic
qualities of Swift's names and language. In the fifties,
however, such critics as Harold Kelling, Paul Odell Clark,
and Roland M. Smith engaged in lively debate over lin
guistic origins, supporting their arguments with elaborate
scientific analyses. Realizing that in 1951 it was no
longer fashionable to pursue sources for their own sake,
Kelling establishes the raison d'etre for the linguistic
studies:
Such a close study of Gulliver's Travels, though not
of extreme importance, can give us some further
indications of the care and ingenuity which Swift
exerted in his writing; and it may in a minor way
be a contribution to the study of an important and
insufficiently emphasized aspect of the book— the
subtlety, the erudition, the allusiveness which
underlie the deceptively simple style of the book.
And the study might also, of course, reveal more of
Swift's humor.82
He also explains that most learned readers in the past had
impressionistic interpretations of most of the proper
names of Books I and II in Here There and Everywhere (Lon
don, 1950), pp. 127-130; and John Robert Moore's suggestion
of the Yahudis, Yahouris, or Yahus, West African worship
pers of Jahova as the source of the name Yahoo, offered in
"The Yahoos of the African Travelers," Notes and Queries.
CXCV (April 29, 1950), 182-185.
82"some Significant Names.in Gulliver's Travels,"
Studies in Ihilology. XL (1951), 778.
117
missed Swift's hints because "Swift played his game
unfairly, demanding from his reader not only extensive
linguistic knowledge but also an acrostic imagination”(p.
764). Kelling warns against attempts to restrict Swift's
ingenuity by any discovery of elaborate systems, but
through numerous examples demonstrates how Swift drew at
random from French, Italian, Greek, Latin, and even Irish,
and frequently obscured his borrowings by reversed or
phonetic spellings or even more obscure devices.
In 1953, Odell Clark, admitting the foolishness of
absolute claims, ventures an elaborate conjectural code for
the languages and names in Gulliver in "A Gulliver Dic
tionary."®^ Clark makes use of the code which Ehrenpreis
had worked out for the "Little Language" of the Journal to
Stella as a basis for his work on the first three books of
Gulliver. In the Journal the primary strategies are sub
stitutions of one letter or digraph for another, especially
of consonants, and the treatment of vowels like the notes
of a musical scale. In Gulliver. Clark also finds the
doubling of consonants, the adding or omission of letters,
the spelling of words out of normal order as girl in
®^Studies in Philology. L (October 1953), 593-617.
118
Grildrig, and the use of contractions (pp. 596-597). He
applies the code to over one hundred words from the first
three voyages, two of the most Interesting of which are his
rendition of Gulliver as gullible and Lemuel as rumor. The
language of the fourth book presents a different problem.
While Clark finds the secret of Swift's human language In
the use of a fairly consistent code, the language of the
horses "seems to rely on variation of the conventional
re [ire sent at ion of the sounds a horse makes, that is, its
neighing or whinny" (p. 617). Since Swift limits the
Houyhnhnm alphabet to fifteen letters, while the average
Houyhnhnm word contains seven letters, there is a great
deal of repetition in letter combinations. This may be,
Clark speculates, Swift's satirical comment on some of the
imperfections of the speech of his day (p. 618).
Apart from his specific analysis of words and the
code on which they are based, Clark's most interesting
contribution is his account of Swift's ironic linguistic
joke--hia making "Gulliver (and us his readers) to say things
we are all unaware of; yea, even to say the thing that
was not" (p. 598). Swift stirs in us "unconscious phono
logical strings," as when Gulliver mentions Brundrecal.
explaining that it means Alcoran, yet the visual and oral
119
rendition of it suggests blunder or blunder all. Also,
through constant repetition of virtually the same root
syllables throughout the voyages, Swift achieves
. . . a homogeneity of sound that reinforces the ap
pearance of actuality and of talking a somehow genuine
but undeniably foreign language. Yet it is all
delusory. Swift compounds Gulliver's ignorance by that
of his readers. (pp. 598-599)
Roland Smith, in 1954, emphasized the Irish sources
of "Swift's Little Language and Nonsense Names," basing his
analysis on Edward Lhwyrd's Archaelogia Britannica and
Begley's English-Irish Dictionary of 1732, rather than the
Dinneen Dictionary used by Kelling.®^ He also fired a few
shots at Clark's attempt at codification. As a result, in
1957 the Journal of English and Germanic Philology carried
a lively "Correspondence" between Clark and Smith.®^
®^Journal of English and Germanic Philology. LIII
(April 1954), 178-196.
®5"Swift's Little Language and Nonsense Names,"
Journal of English and Germanic Philology. LVII (1957),
154. Smithes objection to Clark's "failure to take Swift's
Irish background into Account," and his even less polite
remark that Clark had built "a house of glass from which
he can ill afford to throw stones at Pons and Kelling,"
brought sharp retorts. Clark replied that he merely had
thought that M. Pons was pushing his Rabelaisian theory as
hard as he could, a quite justifiable procedure, but one
with which he did not happen to agree. Defending himself
rather petulantly, Clark commented: "I frankly don't see
120
While the debate was acrimonious in its defense of
particulars, two points made by Smith capture the spirit
of source criticism at the close of the fifties. He pointed
out to Clark that they shared certain areas of agreement,
such as their common belief that any suggestion is "neces
sarily conjectural" and that their ardent espousals of
their respective theses were undertaken in the full know
ledge that probably only a small percentage of their con
jectures ever actually entered Swift's mind. Smith also
indicated his dedication to the proposition that Swift's
linguistic feats are too flexible to be encompassed by any
code, indeed, that Mr. Clark "is deceived if he believes
that one set of conjectures about Swift's procedure, namely
that depending on the Journals' code, is necessarily worse
than another, namely philological analogues of Swift's
syllables" (p. 154). To this he adds further fuel to the
fire with the charges against Smith of an "anachronistic
reliance on Begley when he is proving a case for Lhwyd,
and an erroneous reliance on what I believe is a typo
graphical error" (p. 156). Smith, in his rejoinder, ap
pears aware of the ridiculous level to which scholarship in
the area had fallen and piously suggests that the "decoder
can only hope that he is not being guilty of what Mencken
once called 'reducing the unknowable to terms of the not
worth knowing*" (p. 157). Clark, it seems, had completely
misconceived his purpose, which was merely to suggest "that
Swift may well have derived some of the artificial words
in Gulliver's Travels by applying linguistic principles
advanced in Lhwvd's Archaelogia Britannica which lay con
veniently at his elbow from 1707 on" (p. 157).
121
that many of the doors opened wide by Swift will ever be
closed with any air of finality by Swift's critics" (p.
162).
Thus, a search for sources, which was undertaken at
the turn of the century with deadly earnestness and was
augmented in the first three decades by a rising enthu
siasm for the application of the scientific method in all
fields of criticism, ends in the use of the same scientific
method for the purpose of playing rather acrimonious games.
The serious searcher of sources became more interested in
the relevance of source to interpretation of the work as a
part of the history of ideas or as an aesthetic creation.
In general, however, twentieth century source studies
have contributed a great deal to the understanding and
interpretation of Gulliver. The many studies of literary
sources have shown the range of the literary tradition upon
which Swift drew for one work: from the beast fables of
Ulysses to Tyson's Orang-Outangs or Irish folklore, from
the classical Lucian to the Japanese Wasobiyoe. from the
stories of the Arabian Nights to the philosophy of Berke
ley's New Theory of Vision. The list is myriad. These
studies have also shown, as Harold Williams has pointed
out, that despite Swift's obvious literary debts for some
122
of his incidents and descriptions, possibly even for the
framework of his voyages, "Whenever he borrowed a hint, he
made of it something different and wholly his own." Or,
as Quintana put it, the chief result of investigations into
possible source books
has been to throw Swift's originality into high relief.
Borowski's judgement has been completely reversed.
Gulliver's Travels is now seen as an imaginative work
of high order into which contributary streams flow
only to lose their proper quality. (Mind and Art.
p. 303)
The studies of political sources have produced an
equally impressive array of specific references for the
persons, places and events in Gulliver as may be seen on
the charts detailing the contributions of Firth and Case.
Also, as has been pointed out in both the section on liter
ary sources and that on political sources, twentieth cen
tury criticism in these areas has moved from contributions
of very specific parallels to more and more consideration
of the intellectual and artistic significance of these
parallels. In short, the studies of literary and political
sources as well as those of textual sources may be viewed
as ground work for criticism related to the history of
ideas and to aesthetics.
Oxford Edition (1959), p. xv.
CHAPTER III
PSYCHOLOGICAL CRITICISM
Though it is customary to think of psychological
criticism as a phenomenon peculiar to the twentieth cen
tury, the psychological criticism of Gulliver is firmly
rooted in the nineteenth century considerations of Swift's
misanthropism, obscenity, and possible madness.
The question of the degree of Swift's misanthropy and
its effect upon his work was still completely open in 1890.
Gerald Moriarty still found Gulliver's Travels "a universal
denunciation," and declared that "in the records of mis
anthropy Gulliver1s Travels stands for all time supreme and
unapproachable."1 On the other hand, Henry Morley saw
Gulliver not as "a book standing alone in literature" but
simply as "a more intense expression of that sense of the
^Dean Swift and His Writings (New York, 1893), pp.
247-248.
123
124
corruption of society triilch was rising In many minds*'
during the eighteenth century. "It was an age of shams,
but It was an age also of deepening resentment against
them'* (p. 14). In this view Morley approximates the
attitude of Quintana who, in 1936 objected to those who
mistake Swift's chastisement of man's Pride, "derived from
a reasoned philosophy,"^ for misanthropy, which is the
activity of "one who out of revenge for his own misadven
tures in the world spurned the entire race of mankind"
(p. 301). In general, twentieth century criticism moved
from a strong sense of Swift's misanthropy to Edward
Stone's query in 1949, "Swift and the Horses: Misanthropy
or Comedy?" which seeks to prove not "that Swift conceived
of Houyhnhnmland solely as benevolent comedy"^ but that
misanthropy is hardly the dominant feature of a book con
taining so much of comedy.
The particular contribution of psychological criticism,
^Henry Morley, Gulliver's Travels and Other Works
(London, 1890), pp. 12-13.
^The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift (London, 1936),
p. 300.
^Modern Language Quarterly. X (September 1949), 376.
125
however, has been not the resolution of the battle between
the forces challenging or defending Swift's views or mental
state, but In the amateur or professional attempts to
explain or to show the causes of what had been variously
attacked as misanthropy, obscenity, or madness.
Amateur psychologists offered various explanations
of Swift's "misanthropy., , Herbert Paul, writing in 1900,
c
attributed it to Swift's "temper." Those who could not
accept Swift's native passion as sufficient explanation,
frequently laid the blame for misanthropy, as Winchester
does, upon "the great disappointment of his exile to Ire
land in 1714."** Or as Taylor puts it, Swift's "anger at
the follies and hypocrisies of mankind was exacerbated by
the sense that he had been unjustly treated, and that by
trifling incompetence and vanity his party had lost its
opportunity.
John Haywood rejects the theory of disappointment
^"Prince of Journalists," in Men and Letters (London,
1901), pp. 271-272.
**"Life of Jonathan Swift," in An Old Castle and Other
Essays (New York, 1922), p. 235, though Winchester admits
’^the seeds of it were in his nature."
^W. D. Taylor, Jonathan Swift: A Critical Essay
(London, 1933), p. 232.
126
over political preferment in favor of a theory of physical
frustration. He believes that Swift's recurrent fits of
giddiness and deafness "haunted him like a perpetually
recurring but never predictable nightmare," which forced
him to regard his body "not as an ally, but as his worst
enemy," and that Swift's life and works were in large
measure conditioned by his effort, whether conscious or
unconscious to sublimate his physical apprehensions.** A
more specific physiological explanation, though still by
an amateur, is that of Aldous Huxley who, in 1929, pro
pounded the thesis that "Swift's greatness lies, in the
intensity, the almost insane violence of that 'hatred of
bowels' which is the essence of his misanthropy and which
g
underlies the whole of his work." Carl Van Doren, writing
in 1930, shows his awareness of Swift's emotional nature,
but he offers as his explanation of Swift's "misanthropy,"
a theory of personal alienation:
^Selected Prose Works of Jonathan Swift (New York,
1949), pp. 33-34.
^"Swift," in Do What You Will (London, 1929), p. 99.
Swift, Huxley believes, is a subspecies of the category of
horror-lovers, "who deliberately seek out what pains and
nauseates them for the sake of the extraordinary pleasure
they derive from the overcoming of their repulsion" (p.
96).
127
Without once taking ship to the far corners of the
earth as Gulliver did, Swift had moved about at home
too large for the pygmies, too small for the giants,
too sensible for the philosophers, too human for the
animals. He had never been able quite to adjust
himself to the scale of life as other men lived it.1®
The first truly professional psychological analysis
of Swift and Gulliver was made in 1926, just two years
before Huxley's comment. Sandor Ferenczi, speaking at the
Annual Meeting of the New York Society for Clinical Psy
chiatry in that year, chose as his topic, "Gulliver Phan
tasies." He dealt particularly with "Lilliputian hallu
cinations" of giants and dwarfs as found in the dreams of
neurotics, especially those with anxiety neuroses in whom
the anxiety is connected with castration and mutilation
fears. These he illustrates by reference to passages from
Gulliver and substantiates by a brief account of Swift's
life. 1 1 Swift's status as a posthumous child who was
kidnapped and kept for three years by his nurse constituted
the obvious "pathogenic factor" of his childhood. His lack
of a father opened the door to possible neuroses or homo
sexuality as a youth and his peculiar relations with women
throughout his life suggested "an inhibition of normal
10Swift (New York, 1930), p. 184.
^H'inal Contributions to the Problems and Methods of
Psycho-Analysis (London, 1955), pp. 57-59.
128
potency** (p. 59). Ferenczi concludes:
This insight into Swift's life surely justifies us
who come after him in treating the fantasies of Gulli
ver's Travels exactly as we do the free associations
of neurotic patients in analysis, especially when
interpreting their dreams. (p. 59)
Ferenczi*s conclusion, while offered with considerable
modesty, has become the basis for most of the psychoanalyt
ic studies to follow.
Ferenczi supplies numerous specific interpretations
of "the fantasies of Gulliver." When in Book I Gulliver
stands like a Colossus with Lilliputian troups marching
between his legs, Ferenczi1s interpretation equates "the
strong exhibitionistic tendencies of Gulliver and his great
desire that the Lilliputians should admire him for the size
of his genital," with the
reassurance-fantasy or dream of an impotent man who
in waking life suffers from the idea that his penis
is too small and in consequence of his sense of
inferiority is shy of showing his organ and in dreams
basks in the admiration of those whose penises are
even smaller than his own. (p. 51)
It is also significant that the finger, the "typical
genital symbol," is taken as the standard of measure for
the whole body in Lilliput; while Gulliver's stay in
Lilliput is observed to be nine months and thirteen days--
"a period which exactly corresponds to the duration of
129
pregnancy1' (p. 51). Also, the fantasy of being served by
many tiny women is suspiciously like the "masturbation-
fantasies" of neurotic patients. Ferenczi1s interpreta
tive skill reaches its peak, however, in his explanation of
Gulliver's mode of extinguishing the fire in the Empress's
apartment:
. . . the extinguishing of a conflagration in a
woman's house, especially when this is done by
urinating into it, represents the child's idea of
sexual intercourse, the woman being symbolized by
the house. The heat mentioned by Gulliver is the
symbol of the man's passionate desire (and at the
same time the fire stands for the dangers to which
the genital is exposed). . . . the threat of punish
ment follows hard upon the misdeed and characteristic
ally proceeds from the Emperor, the typical father-
substitute. (p. 52)
The punishment, the loss of his eyes, is the same as that
which Oedipus inflicted upon himself for sexual intercourse
with his mother and may possibly also be "a symbolic dis
tortion of the punishment of castration" (p. 52). Appro
priately, Gulliver's first experience among the Brobding-
nags, that of being very nearly cut in two with a reaping
hook, is also "a symbolic representation of the danger of
castration" (p. 53).
Ferenczi finds Books I and 11 complementary dream
sequences. The experiences of Lilliput represent wish
fulfillment--"description of large size and male potency in
130
his own person" (p. 55) ; while those in Brobdlngnag reveal
the motives necessitating self-magnification--"his dread
lest he should fail in rivalry and in strife with other men
and his impotence with women" (p. 55). Gulliver's life in
the travelling box carried about by Glumdalclitch (preg
nancy) in Book II and his eventual escape when it is dropped
into the sea (birth trauma) constitute a birth phantasy
which may be a transformation and diminution of "quite real
sexual dangers to which they feel unequal into injuries
dating from childhood or even from foetal life" (p. 56).
Thus, impotence and castration anxieties are the primary
psychoanalytic possibilities found in Gulliver by 1926.
In 1934, the German Adolph Heidenhain established a
new approach, popular with later psychoanalysts, in which
Swift's scatology was dubbed "coprophilia" and related to
anal fixation. One of those most influenced by Heidenhain
was I. F. Grant-Duff, who emphasizes Swift's oral and anal
character traits as revealed in "the oral and anal imagery
so prevalent in Swift’s works.He finds Gulliver a
"sort of biographic Galton photograph of the child,
^"A One-Sided Sketch of Jonathan Swift," Psycho
analytic Quarterly. VI (1937), 240-241.
131
Jonathan . . . most certainly Swift's apologia pro vita
sua" (p. 244), and regards Swift's first journey to
Whitehaven in the arms of his kidnapping nurse as a far more
important foundation for Gulliver than all Swift's later
reading of travel literature (p. 258). Indeed, throughout
his travels, Gulliver exhibits the anxiety of a nervous
child to behave appropriately, particularly with "cleanli
ness in regard to evacuations," clothing and sexual expres
sions (p. 245).
Particularly interesting are Duff's interpretations
of Book IV. The whole of Gulliver's return from the land
of the Houyhnhnms supposedly shows him trying desperately
to conform to his ego ideal, the horses, who represent the
ideal of swiftness. * Duff posits that these horses have a
possible phallic, urethral and anal meaning in Swift's
unconscious fantasy, motion being an idea connected with
both excretory functions and horses, and riding on horse
back being
a symbolic mode of expressing the necessity and ability
to control "the motions" both anal and urethral. The
mastery of the spincters is therefore intimately con
nected with an identification with external authority,
so that a horse, by condensation, could represent both
the motion to be controlled and the superego enforcing
the control. (p. 256)
132
The strict sexual abstinence of the Houyhnhnms would also
make them attractive superego symbols. Thus, Book IV shows
"the infant Jonathan's despair at his inability to meet
the demands of his internal longings and the external
repressing forces" (p. 257). His own Yahooism creates an
array of necessarily repressed desires which are dealt with
in two ways: (1) by means of projection--acute misanthropic
awareness of Yahooism in other people; and (2) identifica
tion— a rigid determination to approximate the parental
images and as a reformer to encourage others to do so (p.
257).
Duff also analyzes Swift's preoccupation with death.
On the anal level, he postulates that "the repeated escapes
from death through drowning in Gulliver's voyages suggest
that he may have been a bedwetter as a small child" (p.
256). Swift's more direct concerns with death and senility
are embodied in the pattern of escape from death with which
each of the journeys begins and ends, and in his descrip
tion of Struldbrugs. The latter also introduce Swift's
"conception of himself as a baby" through the comment,
"'when one of them is bom, it is reckoned as ominous"'
(p. 249). His happier fantasies about death appear in the
story of the Houyhnhnms and their calm "reunion with the
133
mother" (p. 253).
The article concludes with Gulliver's cannibalistic
fantasies, common among Infants whose mothers, like Swift's,
have disappeared. Attributing the disappearance to their
having in some way "destroyed and incorporated her," they
are filled with guilty terrors such as those evident in
the Travels when the Houyhnhnms fear that Gulliver will
cause the Yahoos to drink their cattle dry or when, by a
reversal of the fantasy, Gulliver himself is nearly
devoured by an eagle (p. 258).
As a whole, Duff's avowedly "One-Sided Sketch" seeks
to demonstrate the wealth of fantasy, ordinarily uncon
scious, with which Swift's works are filled and the notion
that
Swift is a most convincing example of how closely
pregenitally fixed people may keep in touch with their
unconscious thoughts and mechanisms insofar as giving
them verbal expression is concerned. (p. 243)
In 1942, Ben Karpman discussed the "Neurotic Traits
of Jonathan Swift, as Revealed by 'Gulliver's Travels': A
Minor Contribution to the Problem of Psychosexual Infantal-
ism and Coprophilia." Karpman's analysis dissolves almost
immediately into a virulent attack worthy of the most out
raged Victorian critic. Swift is accused of seeming to
"revel in dirt for its own sake" and of filling his pages
with "loathsome and filthy ideas" to which he
returns time and again with positive relish. They
are literally and obviously dragged in for their own
sake and because of the apparent pleasure which they
gave him. At almost no time are they justified by
the narrative; they are seldom funny; and only rarely
do they serve the purpose of heightening the author's
satire.^
After reviewing the contributions of his predeces
sors, Ferenczi, Heidenhain, and Duff, Karpman embarks upon
a consideration of Gulliver1s TraveIs as a "neurotic
phantasy with coprophilia as its main content" (p. 30).
Gulliver's fire fighting tactics in Lilliput "express
omnipotence and exhibitionism" (p. 166); the Voyage to
Brobdingnag is "a confession of impotence" (p. 181); and
the account of the female Yahoo's attack on Gulliver is
"reversed voyeurism" probably involving "an element of
narcissistic gratification" (p. 180). Nor are the "in
testine Disquiets" of Lilliputian politics without signif
icance. "It is indeed intestine disquiets which afford
the anal-erotic the greatest anticipation of pleasure"
(p. 166). Karpman concludes:
13Psychoanalytic Review. XXIX (1942), pp. 30-31.
135
Gulliver's Travels furnishes abundant evidence of the
neurotic makeup of the author and discloses the pres
ence in him of a number of perverse trends indicative
of fixation at the anal-sadistic stage of libidinal
development. Most conspicuous among these perverse
trends is that of coprophilia, although the work
furnishes evidence of numerous other related neurotic
characteristics accompanying the general picture of
psychosexual infantilism and emotional immaturity,
along with a great deal of emotional ambivalence con
nected with the varied expression of misanthropy and
misogyny. (p. 40)
Some of the "numerous other related characteristics*' are
zoophilia and sodomy, exhibitionism, Sado-masochism,
voyeurism, paraphilia, mysophobia, compensatory potency
reactions, and assorted guilt feelings.
Karpman's analysis rests upon two postulates:
. . . an artistic creation may be analyzed entirely
in the manner of a neurosis, its various elements
being viewed as symbolic expressions of certain emo
tional constellations, just as neurotic symptoms are;
[and], as in the analysis of various people in the
dream as so many aspects of the dreamer's own person
ality; so too, the characters in a work of fiction
are but disguised representations of the novelist's
own personality. (pp. 26-27)
This psychoanalytic justification of the identification not
only of Swift and Gulliver but also of Swift and any other
character or idea which he presents underlies the work of
the other psychoanalysts, but is given its most explicit
statement by Karpman.
In the course of his almost punitive presentation of
136
the neurotic Swift, Karpman, rather surprisingly, supports
the earlier view presented by Huxley that Swift's "hatred
14
of Bowels" may be accounted a source of creative power.
Karpman asserts without qualification that "To be a produc
tive artist one has to have not only the gift of expression,
but, too, deeply personal problems that press for solu
tion" (p. 28). Karpman and Huxley do not stand alone in
this assumption of connection between mental distress and
artistic effectiveness. J. C. Squire finds Swift almost
unique in English literature "in that his unhappiness was
not the effect but the source of his power. . . . 'The
fierce indignation' that, on his own statement, consumed
him" ; 1 5 and William Barrett In "Writers and Madness," pro
poses that "Swift might not have gone mad after writing
Gulliver, but much of the power of that book comes from
the fact that he was already on the road."1* *
14
See p. 126 above.
15"Utopian Satirist" in Life and Letters (London,
n.d.), p. 130.
^ Partisan Review, X (January-February 1947), 10.
George Orwell speaks less positively: "The durability of
Gulliver's Travels goes to show that, if the force of
belief is behind it, a world-view which only just passes
the test of sanity is sufficient to produce a great work
137
In the mid forties, perhaps as a result of the viru
lence of Karpman*s attack, there is a noticeable resistance
to the work of the psychologist-critic. Louis Landa,
observing in 1946 the continuing preoccupation of Swift's
critics with the pessimism and misanthropy of Gulliver1s
Travels and their endeavors to explain these qualities in
terms of Swift's personality, says:
. . . we should recognize that it is only a logical
development of the disordered-intellect theory of
the nineteenth-century critics, the chief difference
being that the terminology has changed and that the
psychoanalyst frankly sees Gulliver's Travels as
case history, whereas the critics were presumably
making a literary appraisal. ^
Landa finds the conclusions of Aldous Huxley less crude
and amateurish, but equally unacceptable interpretations
of Swift or Gulliver, and inveighs against all attempts
involving the
overly simple process of equating biographical fact
and artistic statement, of viewing the work as a
transcription of the author's experiences or as a
precise and complete representation of his personal
philosophy— or as a final explanation of his person
ality. (p. 30)
of art." "Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of
'Gulliver's Travels'" in Shooting an Elephant and Other
Essays (New York, 1950), p. 91.
^"Jonathan Swift," English Institute Essays. 1946
(New York, 1947), p. 27.
138
Ruby Redinger, also writing In 1946, speaks slightingly of
the "penchant for psychological character-analysis"^® which
stands In the way of critical recognition of Swift's
philosophic flagellation of the "universal passion" and
"Classic Vice" of Pride. She feels Swift's position should
not be accounted for by theories of personal misanthropism
(P. 225).
In the previous year, 1945, Samuel Klinger had
objected that critical commentary should concentrate upon
the internal artistry of the Travels rather than being
aimed at discovering special combinations between the
novel's ideas and such universal, extrinsic ideas as
are derivable from psychiatry and sociology.19
For example, "Swift's undeniable preoccupation with filth
and scatology," which
has provided a field day for psychiatrists with a
taste for dabbling in literature and for literary
critics with a taste for dabbling in psychiatry, . . .
[is simply] a legitimate satirical device for
pointing out the physical basis upon which the human
ego rests. (p. 415)
These warnings, however, seem not to have dampened
18
"Jonathan Swift, the Disenchanter," American
Scholar. XV (April 1946), 221.
19"The Unity of Gulliver's Travels." Modern Language
Quarterly. VI, (December 1945), 402.
139
the enthusiasm of the psychologically oriented critics.
In 1950, D. S. Savage still postulates that it is in the
light of Swift's psychological situation--the war within
him between Nature and Reason (Yahoo and Houyhnhnm)--that
Gulliver is to be understood. Savage, like Ferenczi, Duff,
and Karpman, assumes the "infantile foundations of Swift's
emotional world," pointing out that the premise of the
first two books, "the variability of bodily dimensions";
the acute interest in human physiology, especially the
excremental functions; and "the royal archetypes of parent
hood to which Gulliver stands in constant relation"--all
20
reflect perennial preoccupations of the childish mind,
Gulliver's disgrace as the extinguisher of the royal fire
"overpoweringly suggests recollections of real infantile
experiences" (p. 33), and the experiences in Lilliput and
Brobdingnag are simply expressions in alternate terms of
"the incommensurability of his nature and his powers with
the conditions of the absolute world" (p. 33). In both
countries Gulliver, alias Swift, confronts the same prob
lem:
20"Swift," Western Review. XV (Autumn 1950), 33.
140
. . . the impossibility of exercising his potency
upon the appropriate object, of consummating poten
tiality in actuality, thought in act, spirit in the
material. (p. 33)
Swift*s "interior disjunction," this same sense of the
incommensurability of the finite and the infinite, is
translated in Book III into the image of the Flying Island
of La put a.
Savage also detects a psychological sequence in the
four books:
the first and second together depict Swift's remem
bered childish situation and his adult endeavour to
return to its innocent immediacy, the third charac
teristically portrays the specific problems of adult
consciousness, while the fourth displays the final
descent to nihilism which is Swift's only solution
to the dilemma of his life. (p. 35)
Savage's analysis is considerably less clinical than
that of the other psychological critics, frequently adopt
ing rather metaphysical phraseology, but it is hardly less
definite in its identification of Gulliver and Swift and
its willingness to force the psychological interpretation
of detail.
The most extensive Freudian study of Swift appeared
in 1955 in two forms.in her article, Dr. Greenacre runs
21
"The Mutual Adventures of Jonathan Swift and Lemuel
Gulliver: A Study in Pathology," The Psychoanalvtic
141
the usual psychoanalytic gambit, considering the 1’ homo
sexual fellatio fantasy11 of being at the mercy of a
bisexual adult, as illustrated in Book II by the young
monkeyfs attempt to feed Gulliver (p. 41); flthe Island of
Abstract Fantasy without Reality Testing, 11 as illustrated
in the concepts rampant in Laputa (p. 42); and Swift1s
personal problems of identity and identification (p. 46),
his homosexual conflicts (p. 48), his alternating scopto-
philia and exhibitionism (p. SO), his sense of oedipal
crime (pp. 50-51), his stunting bisexuality (p. 53), and
the anal stamp of his character (pp. 53-54). Her penulti
mate conclusion is quite simple. The Travels are
largely the projection into the activity of Lemuel's
masturbatory fantasies which, like the character of
Swift, are closely interwoven with anal problems and
ambitions rather than exclusively genital ones. (p.
60)
In Book IV, Gulliver finally admits his attraction to the
primitive and dirty, and his attempts to save himself
through adopting the rationality of the Houyhnhnms lead
only to a powerful increase in his neurosis (p. 55). While
Quarterly, XXIV (1955), 20-61, and a volume entitled Swift
and Carroll: A Psychoanalytic Study of Two Lives (New
York, 1955). The first was an extract from the book while
in preparation.
142
Dr. Greenacre began her study out of
an Interest In distortions in the body image involving
sensations of change in size, either of the entire
body or of certain body parts (p. 20),
sensations which she believed were of particular signifi*-
cance in fetishism, she absolves Swift and Gulliver of the
charge of overt fetishism. Having resigned from physical
gentility, they had no need of a fetish (p. 60). All of
which is a rather more delicate way of voicing Karpman's
complaint that "not once in the narrative do we find an
account of actual coitus" (p. 169).
In her psychoanalytic volume on Swift and Carroll,
Dr. Greenacre includes a great deal more biographical
material. Her basic approach is to give a "Life," followed
by a comparison of the events concerning Gulliver and
Swift with considerable attention to the story of Gulliver;
a review of the "Clinical Picture" as it applies to Swift's
case history; and, finally, an "interpretation" of the
evidence in relation to the Travels. Her summation of the
similarities between the lives of Gulliver and Swift is
typical of much of her treatment of detail:
Gulliver was a few years older than Swift. Unlike
Gulliver, Swift never traveled far, though he several
times planned to; but he was a constant voyager
between Ireland and England, sometimes dividing the
143
year between the two countries. Swift was a clergy
man, preoccupied with the ills of his own body and
the political ills of the state, but could hardly
bear to consider the bodies of others. Gulliver was
a surgeon's apprentice, who went on to explore the
topography of foreign lands and peoples. Gulliver
went to Cambridge at fourteen, the age at which Swift
entered Trinity. While Gulliver was being appren
ticed to his master Bates, Swift at a corresponding
time was working for his Master's degree. Both left
their native soil at the age of twenty-one, Gulliver
going to Leyden to prepare for travel, and Swift to
England to find his mother. At twenty-seven, Gulli
ver married and attempted to settle down in London.
At the same age, Swift was wishing to marry Jane
Waring and settle into the life of a clergyman. Both
men lost their benefactors, Mr. Bates and Sir William
Temple respectively, at the age of thirty-two.
Gulliver then returned to the sea, and Swift to the
Church. The year 1699, in which Gulliver set out on
his first recorded voyage, was a landmark in the life
of Swift, being the time of Sir William Temple's
death, of Swift's final rupture with Jane Waring,
and of the marriage of Jane Swift [Swift's sister].
The date, December 1715, of Gulliver's return from
his last voyage in a state in which he abhorred his
wife, was only a few months before Swift's supposed
marriage to Stella. (p. 63)
Like her predecessors, Dr. Greenacre notes Swift's
general afflictions of "severe anxiety and diffuse hypo
chondriasis" of the type which often accompanies "an unusu
ally severe castration complex in which pregenital deter
minants are strong" and his "vivid preoccupation with the
affairs of the lower bowel" in all his impersonal writings
(p. 92). She also follows previous critics in identifying
the Yahoos as the representatives of "the dirty, unre
144
strained sexual people" and the Houyhnhnms as "the Ideal
ized, gentle, reasonable . . . superego figures, possess
ing all of the reaction formations against the primitive
animal instincts" (p. 93). However, her interpretation of
the two nurses^ in the second voyage is more original.
They suggest to Dr. Greenacre a deterioration in the
intimate association of the infant Jonathan and the anony
mous nurse who had kidnapped him. This experience with the
older nurse
. . . depicts rather bitterly Gulliver's plight [as a
recent inhabitant of Lilliput] of finding himself with
the tables turned--small, threatened, not only by the
adults but by a year-old child, suckled by the loath
some nurse. The description of the breast certainly
contains elements of breast awe and envy turned to
loathing and with the consequent aim of degrading it.
(p. 1 1 2 )
Dr. Greenacre also surmises that
the nurse became pregnant after her return to England
and in due time had a child whose suckling upset the
infant Jonathan, and aroused in him intensest jeal
ousy, biting resentment, and cannibalistic feelings
toward the infant--projected by Gulliver as felt
toward him by the infant. (p. 112)
As part of his sexual bias, Gulliver, like Swift, found
22
The disgusting older nurse suckling a year-old
child who endangers Gulliver's life by seizing him by the
middle and putting his head in its mouth and the protective
little girl nurse, Glumdalclitch.
145
body apertures, even the pores of the skin on the nurse's
breast, disgusting.
Dr. Greenacre echoes the usual charges of voyeurism
and exhibitionism, the latter being expressed largely, she
feels, "in excretory rather than in genital sensual or
reproductive terms" (p. 96), but again becomes truly crea
tive in dealing with masturbation fantasies, Gulliver, as
a traveling surgeon, had had his preliminary training under
a man by the name of Bates of whom he said,
Ity good Master Bates, dying in two years after and I
having few friends, my business began to fail; for
my conscience would not suffer me to imitate the bad
practice of too many among my brethren. (p. 98)
Despite some doubts as to the currency of the word mastur
bation in the 1720's, Dr. Greenacre discovers in this
passage, confession masked by punning. But she detects an
even greater exhibition of masturbation fantasies in the
third voyage, with its round island "rising and falling
above the body of the continent," and peopled with individ
uals engrossed in scientific fantasies "in keeping with
elaborated masturbation fantasies" (p. 100).
Greenacre's evidences of the anal quality of Swift's
imagination are similarly fanciful. Their cause is laid at
the door of the kidnapping nurse who is accused of being
146
"In some way overly conscientious and harsh in her early
toilet training," thus leaving the "stamp of the nursery
morals of the chamber pot forever on his character" (p.
107). The results of this early experience include the use
of such proper names as Glubdubdrib, Luggnagg, Traldrag-
dubh, and Glumdalclitch which, with their "repeated
consonants and duplicated syllables overburdened by con
sonants," suggest to Greenacre,
an onomatopoeic derivation from the sound of drip
pings and droppings, possibly originating in the
overly intense preoccupation with toilet functions,
which seemed for the child Jonathan to engulf and
then to color his important infantile philosophies.
(P. 102)
A full catalogue of Dr. Greenacre*s findings would
be a needless extension here. The preceding samples should
indicate the strongly biographical case-history flavor of
the work coupled with rather strained interpretations of
detail.
Fortunately, not all Freudians are quite as fanciful
as Dr. Greenacre. Donald R. Roberts, writing in Literature
and Psychology in 1956, attempts to correct the excesses
and superficialities of some of the earlier studies,
asserting that the studies of Ferenczi, Duff, and Karpman
"all suffer from inadequate preparation and a tendency to
147
23
hypothetical conclusions." In his own more sober inter
pretation, however, Roberts is no less clairvoyant concern
ing Swift's nurse than was Greenacre, adding that this stem
caretaker probably supplemented her toilet severity "with
caresses of a faintly lascivious character" (p. 10). Nor
does he avoid the universal pitfall of Freudians, the
identification of persona and author. Gulliver's praise
of the Houyhnhnm eugenics and planned parenthood are iden
tified as Swift's own cherished belief, and Gulliver's
fright at the overzealous female Yahoo as Swift's own
frigjit at sexuality (pp. 16-17).
It is with some relief that one turns from the pro
fessional Freudian to the generally balanced psychological
treatment of the layman Irvin Ehrenpreis, vAio, in 1958,
considered the twin questions of Swift's obscenity and
madness. He begins with the dictum:
There is no point in labelling him [Swift] as this
or that type of neurotic unless one can use the classi
fication to understand his achievement. If the
labelling conceals his achievement, it has been worse
than useless.24
^"A Freudian View of Jonathan Swift," Literature and
Psychology« VI (February 1956), 8 .
^ The Personality of Jonathan Swift (Cambridge,
Mass., 1958), p. 29.
148
In short, "to classify him in a psychological category is
to do little toward evaluating his art" (p. 30). Ehren-
preis doe8 not agree with those who accuse Swift of "pre
occupation with bodily decay, with sex, and with filth,
when those elements have no artistic function," and calls
to his support the work of Kathleen Williams and R. M.
Frye in explaining the artistic significance of the filth-
and-decay motifs in Gulliver. H e suggests further that
many of the "obscene" motifs picked out as Swiftian may not
be uniquely so, as, for example, the repulsive descriptions
of the Struldbruggs.^
As to the charges of madness, Ehrenpreis dismisses
them with the same dispassionate logic that Dr. Bucknill
^Page 3 3 . The articles referred to are respec
tively, "'Animal Rationis Capax, 1 A Study of Certain As
pects of Swift's Imagery," English Literary History. XXI
(September 1954), 193-207, and "Swift's Yahoo and the
Christian Symbols for Sin," Journal of the History of
Ideas, XV (April 1954), 201-217.
^Pages 46-47. J. Leeds Barroll would concur. In a
full scale treatment of "Gulliver and the Struldbruggs,"
PMLA. LXXIII (March 1958), pp. 43-50, Barroll seeks among
other things to show how common old age and the fear of
death were "as conventional subjects for moral reflection
and satire" (p. 43).
149
27
had shown In his treatment of the question in 1882.
Although Ehrenpreis is able to add little to the earlier
treatment, it is noteworthy that he found it necessary to
refute the charges. Unfortunately, in the intervening
years, many, like Aldous Huxley and John Middleton Murry,
had perpetuated the nineteenth century description of
Swift's mental imbalance.
Only when Ehrenpreis deals with Swift's relations
with women does he slip into the prevalent Freudian mold.
Here he, too, links biography and creative work, pointing
out that in all his voyages Gulliver
. . . formed only one deep emotional-relationship
with a female— a girl whom he first met when she was
a child of nine. (p. 26)
This girl, so like Swift's Stella (Hester or Esther John
son), left her family to live with him, caring for him as if
he were a baby. Of this literary and biographic fancy,
fiirenpreis writes in Freudian terms:
Swift has achieved the quaint fantasy of a mother
forty feet tall but young enough to be his daughter:
a behemoth against whom he could offer no resistance,
yet whose entire life was consecrated to his service;
2^"Dean Swift's Disease," Brain. IV (January 1882),
reprinted as an appendix in Sophie Shilleto Smith, Dean
Swift (New York, 1910), pp. 325-329.
150
a source of unflagging affection starting up suddenly,
with no effort on his part, and to which he need have
made no return. (p. 27)
After noting the improbability of the situation, Ehrenpreis
continues:
This is not a portrait or even a caricature. It is a
reverie, playing about the archetypes of the women to
whom Swift felt drawn; and vrtiile there may be allu
sions to Esther Johnson in the fantasy, they are mixed
and distorted. (p. 27)
This, however, is Ehrenpreis* only "Freudian slip" in an
otherwise eminently sane and balanced analysis.
The most recent critic to deal with psychoanalytic
criticism in detail is Norman 0. Brown, who opens up en
tirely new vistas in his forceful treatment of "The
Excremental Vision."^® Although Brown credits John Middle-
9Q
ton Murry with coining the phrase "excremental vision," *
he attributes to Aldous Huxley the recognition of "the
central importance of the excremental theme." Brown first
demolishes the efforts of Quintana to "housebreak this
tiger [Swift] of English literature," citing particularly
28
From Life against Death: The Psychoanalytical
Meaning of History (Middletown, Conn., 1959), pp. 182-
194.
^The title of a chapter in Murry's Jonathan Swift,
published in 1955.
151
Quintana's dismissal o£ the excremental theme of Book IV
as bad art--"'the sensationalism into vriiich Swift falls
while developing the theme of bestiality.'"30 Second,
Brown denounces as Inadequate the views of Huxley and
Murry, who, "after admitting into consciousness the un
pleasant facts which previous criticism had repressed,"
proceed to self-protection via "systematic distortion,
denunciation, and deprecation" (p. 183). Huxley speaks of
Swift's "obsessive preoccupation with the visceral and
excrementitious," implying potential insanity and a connec
tion with a "temperamental coldness" related to genital
disturbances; while Murry transforms Swift's misanthropy
into misogyny so that, according to Brown,
the entire excremental vision can be explained away
as an attempt to justify his genital failure (with
Varina, Vanessa, and Stella) by indicting the filthi
ness of the female sex. (p. 183)
Murry also links the excremental vision with Swift's final
mental break-down, and explains,
"Evidently the whole complex was working in Swift's
mind when he wrote the fourth part of Gulliver. , . .
Its emergence at that moment may have been the
^^Brown, p. 182. Quintana, Mind and Art. p. 327.
152
outcome of a deep emotional upheaval caused by the
death of Vanessa."31
Brown remarks tartly, at this point, that if the duty of
criticism is to judge Swift insane, "criticism should be
turned over to the psychoanalysts, who have handled the
matter quite adequately." Just how adequately, Brown
demonstrates by references from Ferenczi to Greenacre.
Brown would completely reverse the process. He
argues that if it is recognized, as he believes it should
be, that
. . . the proper aim of psychoanalysis is the diagno
sis of the universal neurosis of mankind, in which
psychoanalysis is itself a symptom and a stage, like
any other phase in the intellectual history of man
kind,
then Swift's literary achievements will no longer be
explained away "as mere epiphenomena on his individual
neurosis" (p. 185). Instead, critics will
. . . seek to appreciate his [Swift's] insight into
the universal neurosis of Mankind. Then psychoanal
ysis becomes a method not for explaining away but
for explicating Swift. (pp. 185-186)
Brown's new thesis is
^Brown, p. 183. Cf. Middleton Murry, Jonathan
Swift: A Critical Biography (New York, 1955), pp. 440-
441.
153
. . . that if we are willing to listen to Swift we will
find startling anticipations of Freudian theorems
about anality, about sublimation, and about the uni
versal neurosis of mankind, (p. 186)
offered through the vehicle not of psychoanalysis but of
wit, which even Freud recognized as having ,Mits own way
of exploring the universal neurosis of mankind'" (p. 186).
Read, thus, the Houyhnhnms "represent a critique of the
genital institutions of mankind," and, more importantly,
the Yahoos "represent a critique of the anal function."
The latter are the "raw core of human bestiality," but
Swift1s vision and Gulliver's redemption rest upon recogni
tion that the "human animal is distinguished from others
as the distinctively excremental animal," and that "the
civilized man of Western Europe not only remains Yahoo but
is worse than Yahoo" (p. 188). This excremental vision of
the Yahoo is, Brown asserts, "subtantially identical with
the psychoanalytical doctrine of the extensive role of anal
erotism in the formation of human culture" (p. 189). Swift
also anticipates Freud "in emphasizing the connection
between anal erotism and human aggression" (p. 190), and,
like Ernest Jones in his essay on "Anal-Erotic Character
Traits," Swift "leaves us with the impression that there is
no aspect of higher culture uncontaminated by connections
154
with anality" (p. 194). Indeed, Swift goes further, even
anticipating "the psychoanalytical theorem that an anal
sublimation can be decomposed into simple anality" (p.
194).
While Swift's anticipations of Freud are not pre
sented as unique (St. Augustine is cited as a precedent),
and while the view is a welcome relief after the years of
exploring Swift's neuroses, one questions the value of
Brown's study. Swift has, perhaps out of hi$ own torture
and neurosis, written truly of universal suffering and
neuroses, but is Gulliver most profitably viewed simply as
an "objective correlative" of psychoanalysis? Perhaps the
best that can be said for Brown's effort is that it turns
critical attention from the negative dead-end of most psy
chological criticism toward possible relationships between
psychology and the history of ideas. At least, it releases
Swift from his previous status as the helpless victim of
analysis and elevates him to the status of father to his
tormentors.
CHAPTER IV
GULLIVER AND THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
Between 1940 and 1960 most critics of Gulliver went
beyond the pursuit of particular origins for specific
passages which had occupied the writers of source studies.
Those who turned to a consideration of Gulliver in relation
to its intellectual milieu, both ancient and contemporary,
belong to a major trend in twentieth century criticism,
critics in the history of ideas. To assign a date to the
beginning of this trend is difficult, since critics have
always used the method sporadically. However, Marjorie
Nicholson suggests that interest in studies in the history
of ideas was firmly established by such works as White
head's Science and the Modern World and Lovejoy’s Great
Chain of Being, both of which appeared about 1935.* Cer
tainly, it is critical material concerning Gulliver pub-
*Science and Imagination (Ithaca, New York, 1956),
p, v.
155
156
lished since 1935 which most clearly falls in this cate
gory, though for purposes of comparison, some attention
will be given in this chapter to scattered evidences of
such thought prior to the mid-thirties. In the corpus of
Gulliver criticism relating to the history of ideas, three
divisions may be made: (1) Political Thought, (2) Scien
tific Thought, and (3) Philosophical and Religious Thought.
Political Thought
The two critics, who have dealt most effectively with
the particular political sources of Gulliver, are, as was
indicated in detail in Chapter II, Sir Charles Firth (1919)
and Arthur Case (1945). In both, the primary interest was
in the establishment of particular references, to "consult
annals and compare dates," as Swift had suggested.
However, Case's development of his contention that Swift
wrote Gulliver's Travels basically as a "treatise on
political theory,"^ proves him far more interested in the
history of ideas than Firth.
Between Firth and his exclusive preoccupation with
^"Political Significance of 'Gulliver's Travels,'"
in Essays. Historical and Literary (Oxford, 1938), p. 240.
^Four Essays on "Gulliver's Travels." (Princeton,
1945), p. 109.
157
detail and Case, very little critical attention was devoted
to Swift's political Ideas as such. There were, of course,
such occasional remarks as that of Ernest Boyd (1925),
"The day of the rabble was approaching and Swift described
the Yahoos,*1 ^ or that of William Butler Yeats, "He foresaw
the ruin to come, Democracy, Rousseau, the French Revolu
tion . . . that is why he wrote Gulliver. G . B. Harrison
in his treatment in 1927 of the Social and Political Ideas
of Some English Thinkers of the Augustan Age found a similar
lack of sympathy between Swift and the optimistic political
theorists of the early eighteenth century and said of the
Yahoos,
They are simply men as Swift saw them, as repulsive
in their social and political morality as in their
physical brutality, fundamentally incapable of reason
or improvement.^
Two other writers before Case, in fields closely
related to political theory, observed equally negative
reactions in Swift to his time. Max Lerner, viewing Swift
4
"New Way with Old Masterpieces; Jonathan Swift,"
Harper's CL (April 1925), 594.
^"Preface." In The Words upon the Window-Pane
(London, 1934), p. 75.
6(New York, 1923), p. 208.
158
as "Literary Anthropologist,"^ (1939) found the climax of
Swift's social thought in Gulliver. Here, in the jargon
of the anthropologist, Swift achieved "an anthropological
attitude, which enabled him to gain an inhuman perspective
in measuring human character and social organization," and
as a result:
living in an age of expansion, at the crest of the
commercial revolution and the beginning of the indus
trial, saw clearly that man's increasing power was
being crystallized in stupid institutions, vested in
a grasping new class, entrusted to an animal who, in
Swift's own words, was not by nature rationalis but
only rationis capax. (p. 296)
H. V. Dyson, discussing the relation between the Brobding-
nagians and eighteenth century economics, found the atti
tude of the Brobdingnagian king--
whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades
of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only
one grew before would deserve better of mankind and
do more essential service to his country than the
whole race of politicians put together
— typical of Swift's contempt for politicians. Dyson also
pointed out Swift's scorn of the popular concern in the
eighteenth century for new methods of finance and manu-
^Ideas Are Weapons: The History and Uses of Ideas
(New York, 1939), p. 359.
159
Q
facture, particularly as it related to the Royal Society.
George Orwell, writing in the same year as Case,
sought to establish Swift as a Tory anarchist. Swift, he
delcared, was "driven into a sort of perverse Toryism by
the follies of the progressive party of the moment,"^ and
his
. . . implied aim is a static, incurious civilization
--the world of his own day, a little cleaner, a lit
tle saner, with no radical change and no poking into
the unknowable. (p. 83)
Orwell finds Swift no "simple-lifer" or admirer of the "Noble
Savage," but a man devoted to civilization, particularly
the civilization of the p a s t . o n the other hand, Orwell
states that Swift's
greatest contribution to political thought, in the
narrower sense of the words, is his attack,
especially in Part III, on what would now be called
totalitarianism, . . . [and his] clear pre-vision
o
Augustans and Romantics. 1689-1830 (London, 1940),
p. 141.
Q
"Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of 'Gulli
ver's Travels.'" In Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays
(New York, 1945), p. 81.
l^Orwell observes that Swift believed that "modern man
has degenerated sharply" and in a footnote suggests that
Swift's observation of physical decadence may have been
a reality in the light of the comparatively recent intro
duction of both syphilis and distilled liquors into
Europe (p. 83).
160
of the spy-haunted ’police state,' with its endless
heresy-hunts and treason trials. (p. 84)
Orwell also finds much of Book IV a picture of an anar
chistic society, governed not by law in the ordinary sense,
but by the voluntarily accepted dictates of "Reason."
Swift's anarchy is admittedly only "intermittent" as he
does not think better of the common people than their
rulers and is not an advocate of social equality or repre
sentative institutions. On the contrary, in Book IV Swift
accepts the Houyhnhnm caste system with Tory equanimity.
Thus, Orwell presents paradoxical contrasts in Swift the
Tory anarchist--
despising authority while disbelieving in liberty,
and preserving the aristocratic outlook while seeing
clearly that the existing aristocracy is degenerate
and contemptible.^
Orwell's analysis is popular in style and tends to be
impressionistic. Also, Orwell is rather more interested in
comparisons of Swift's ideas with political trends in the
twentieth century than with those of the past, and he
views Swift from the fixed perspective of a hopeful liberal
Upage 8 6 . James Preu, writing in 1953, attributes
similar views to Swift in his articles, "Swift's Influ
ence on Godwin' 8 Doctrine of Anarchism," and "Antimonarch
ism in Swift and Godwin."
161
with many misgivings concerning "the reactionary cast of
Swift's mind." His sympathy with Swift is, therefore, far
more limited than that of later c r i t i c s . 1 2
Obviously, the contributions to the history of polit
ical ideas in Gulliver criticism were meager before Case.
He, however, set forth in 1945 the five political and
social theories, which he believed had prompted Swift to
write Gulliver. They were in the main those to which Swift
was true throughout his entire life. Their basis had been
the principles of the old Whigs, and when, about 1710,
Swift became a Tory, he insisted that he had remained
stedfast in his beliefs, while the parties had altered
theirs. The five theories selected by Case are the follow
ing. First, the authority to govern must reside in the
1 2
Both Yeats in the "Introduction" to The Words upon
the Window Pane. and Quintana in his Introduction (pp.
29-30), raise the issue of the fairness of doing as Orwell
does, of judging a man's ideas in terms of present values
and circumstances. Yeats argues for the need to under
stand Swift in the light of a specific historical setting.
Quintana suggests that Swift is a difficult man to confine
historically and that "though the ideas of equality,
economic, social and political, which have arisen in modern
industrial society were all foreign to his mind, the doc
trines he upheld have an indisputable place in the tradi
tion of liberal political thought which has flowed into
the present from sources in the seventeenth century and
earlier."
162
Whole of the body politic. Second, an effective balance
between the three estates of the realm--kings, nobles, and
commons-’- ‘ must be maintained at all times, this "Gothic"
form being the natural, primitive government of the Old
English (p. 108). Third, both the theory of the divine
right of the king over church and state held by the old
Tory Party of Swift' s youth and the later movement of the
radical Whigs to repeal the sacramental test in order to
open government posts to dissenters were in serious error
(p. 109). Fourth, the Whig tendency to encourage scien
tists and what Swift felt to be chimerical experimentation
in all fields was fit only for satiric treatment (p. 1 1 2 ).
Finally, society needed to return to real or imagined
earlier practices, which were nearer to perfection; for
Swift believed with his age that the world tended to
decline, "whether from the Golden Age of classical mythol
ogy or from the Garden of Eden of Hebrew legend" (p. 124).
Two years later, Z. S. Fink took for detailed consid
eration, one aspect of Case's outline--Swift1s adoption of
the "Gothic" theory of government. Fink is especially
interested in showing how Swift could advance the "Gothic"
theory of the mixed or balanced state at the same time that
162
Whole of the body politic. Second, an effective balance
between the three estates of the realm--kings, nobles, and
commons— must be maintained at all times, this "Gothic"
form being the natural, primitive government of the Old
English (p. 108). Third, both the theory of the divine
right of the king over church and state held by the old
Tory Party of Swift's youth and the later movement of the
radical Whigs to repeal the sacramental test in order to
open government posts to dissenters were in serious error
(p. 109). Fourth, the Whig tendency to encourage scien
tists and what Swift felt to be chimerical experimentation
in all fields was fit only for satiric treatment (p. 1 1 2 ).
Finally, society needed to return to real or imagined
earlier practices, which were nearer to perfection; for
Swift believed with his age that the world tended to
decline, "whether from the Golden Age of classical mythol
ogy or from the Garden of Eden of Hebrew legend" (p. 124).
Two years later, Z. S. Fink took for detailed consid
eration, one aspect of Case's outline--Swift's adoption of
the "Gothic" theory of government. Fink is especially
interested in showing how Swift could advance the "Gothic"
theory of the mixed or balanced state at the same time that
163
he upholds classical models as e x a m p l e s .13 The explanation
is simply that Swift, unlike some of his contemporaries,
was aware that the ideal of the mixed or balanced state had
had an ancient origin. It was formed by Polybius, came
down through Cicero, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch,
and a long line of Renaissance writers, including Machia-
velli, Cardinal Contarini, and Sir Thomas More, and finally
was applied to the English constitution by John Ponet and
Sir Thomas Smith. The classical Republicans of the Puritan
era--the Harringtons and Miltons--elaborated the theory,
seeking to create in England a republican mixed state
modeled on ancient examples and their supposed modern
counterpart, the Venetian republic (p. 152). The Whigs
had confused matters by taking over the theory of the mixed
13
"Political Theory in Gulliver's Travels," Journal
of English Literary History. XIV (June 1947), 151-161.
Fink states that, as Case had pointed out, Swift constructed
a mixed monarchy--the three estates of king, lords, and
commons held in equilibrium--among the Brobdingnagians
in Book II, yet "had Gulliver discover in Book III on the
island of Glubbdubdrib that the Brutuses and the younger
Cato were heroes and that the shades of a Roman Senate
'seemed to be an assembly of heroes and demigods' beside
which modern legislatures made a poor showing indeed.
Thus did the strange anomaly come about which Professor
Case pointed out but did not explain, that Roman models and
ancient republican statesmen are held up for admiration in
a book which develops a so-called Gothic theory of mixed
monarchy." Fink, pp. 155-156.
164
state, suppressing in the process not only the classical
examples but also the classical origin and theoretical
foundations of their view, and assuring their public that
mixed and balanced government was the peculiar invention
and characteristic of Gothic monarchies (p. 154). Fink,
determined to establish the importance of the ancient line
age of the mixed or balanced theory of government, chal
lenges the "too exclusive” interpretation of Gulliver as a
Tory satire on Whigs. He finds Gulliver to be, instead,
an argument for the total classical tradition of mixed
government, which included three further views: (1 ) that
political parties are factions and inimical to maintaining
the balance in a mixed state, (2 ) that standing armies are
dangerous, but a militia of citizens is helpful in the
maintenance of the mixed state,^ and (3) that the "pure”
^Brobdingnag is provided with a citizen militia,
and Fink is convinced that Swift was writing in the tradi
tion of the classical republicans of the Puritan era with
its accompanying idealization of Venetian practices,
because "the militia of the Brobdingnagians is itself
guarded against the development of faction, as it is in
Harrington's Oceana, by having officers 'chosen after the
manner of Venice by ballot'” (p. 159). He also observes
that historically, the Brobdingnagians had had trouble
with "the nobility often contending for power, the people
for liberty, and the king, for absolute dominion,” but that
the establishment of a militia in the time of the grand-
165
forms of government - -monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy--
are impermanent, the only possible deterrent for their
tendencies toward degeneration and decay being a carefully
maintained equilibrium of all three elements in a single
mixed government. Thus, Fink discovers in a single classi
cal theory, transmitted through the Renaissance, the basis
not only of Swift's theory of mixed government but also of
his consistent opposition to party factions and his belief
in "deteriorationism. The latter are, Fink asserts,
among the most persistent motifs in the whole of Gulliver
and appear particularly in Swift's treatment of the fac
tions of Lilliput and his creation of a partyless state in
the lands of the Brobdingnagians and the Houyhnhnms (p.
161).
One of the most recent analysts of political theory
father of the present king had effectively adjusted the
equilibrium of the state, preventing deteriorationism for
the time being at least (p. 161).
1 s
Fink obviously builds on the remarks of Case, but
he challenges them in two respects. Case had assumed that
the king had a special responsibility to maintain the
balance between people and nobles, and Case had also seen
"deteriorationism" in Gulliver as a more limited theme
than Fink finds it. See Case, p. 124, and Fink, pp. 159-
161.
166
in Gulliver, Richard J. Dircks, ^ agrees that Swift wrote
in the tradition of the partyless, factionless state, dear
to the hearts of the Puritan Republicans and their Renais
sance predecessors. However, he objects to Fink's conten
tion that Gulliver should not be interpreted solely as a
Tory satire on the Whigs. Dircks feels that to see Gulli
ver only as a general satire on the balanced partyless
state can lead to the false assumption that the partyless
state described in Book IV is an element in Swift's Utopia,
and he is concerned to establish:
(1) that the Houyhnhnm society does not represent
Swift's idea of a utopian civilization, but is to be
interpreted as ironical satire, and (2 ) that the
satire is particularly, although probably not exclu
sively, directed against the extension of the polit
ical and social philosophy of John Locke, as
implemented by the Whigs. (p. 145)
Dircks distinguishes carefully between the theories
of Locke with which Swift presumably was sympathetic and
the resulting social system, which is the butt of Swift's
satire. He believes that a careful evaluation of the
social habits of the Houyhnhnms will reveal a striking
similarity between their way of life and that to which the
^"Gulliver's Tragic Rationalism," Criticism. II
(Spring 1960), 139-149.
167
Lockean social theories of the Whig government might lead,
if carried to excess. The picture of the Houyhnhnms liv
ing, as totally rational creatures, in a state of liberty
without license and with everyone administering the laws of
nature for himself— laws of temperance and mutual benevo-
lence--is essentially an extension of the Lockean ideal. ^
Similarly, Swift's depiction of the Houyhnhnm approach to
the problem of the family unit is quite as "thoroughly
rational" as that of Locke (pp. 138-139); and Locke's
comments on the rights of servants, which are "a recognized
basis not only for a strict caste system . . . but also for
the justification of slavery in the social order," have
their application in the hierarchy of Houyhnhnmland (p.
140). Locke's emphasis upon the importance of the legis
lative and executive power of civil society as a means of
preserving the rights of the people is given an ironic
twist in the Houyhnhnm's freedom from a judicial system and
dependence upon the general assembly for the administration
of justice, for example, the justice meted out to Gulliver.
^T. 0. Wedel, "On the Philosophical Background of
Gulliver's Travels." Studies in Philology, XXIII (October
1926), 442-443, also observed this, as Dircks points out,
p. 138.
168
Dircks also detects a close parallel between this general
assembly and the English Parliament of Swift's day, which
was both more central In government and less accomplished
In the making of Important decisions In social legislation
1 f t
than its present day counterpart. Thus, Dircks adds, to
the picture of Swift the classical advocate of the mixed
or balanced state and its concomitant lack of faction and
standing armies, the image of Swift the ironic critic of
the Whig application of Locke's political theories.
A somewhat different approach to some of the same
material is presented in Edwin Benjamin's discussion of
"The King of Brobdingnag and Secrets of State."19 Benjamin
establishes a general contrast between "moral and amoral
statecraft" as characteristic modes of political thought in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These modes he
finds reflected in the contrasting views of Gulliver and
the King of Brobdingnag.^ Gulliver's suggestions are
^®Dircks notes that the one subject debated among
the Houyhnhnms is the Yahoos, but that nothing of impor
tance is decided.
^ Journal of the History of Ideas, XVIII (October
1957), 572-579.
^°Gulliver. II, Chapter 7.
169
amoral--governmental use of force, particularly gunpowder,
and of intrigue and trickery. The suggestions of the King
of Brobdingnag, on the other hand, indicate reliance upon
common sense and reason, justice and "lenity." In Brob
dingnag, what binds the ruler to the ruled is not the
exercise of force or manipulation, but "love and reason and
ethical concepts represented by fame, honor, or reputa
tion."^ Benjamin cites North's translation of Plutarch
as an expression of "the same faith in a rational political
order that lies behind the King's words" (p. 573); whereas
Machiavelli, with his technical interest in politics--
attempting to derive certain laws of political cause and
effect--and his espousal of power politics suggests the view
proffered by Gulliver. Gabriel Harvey, a contemporary of
Spenser, had noted the difference between the "new" poli
tics, which he described as Machiavellian, and the older
and more traditional brand. The older form appears to be
the classical mixed or balanced government of Fink which
Benjamin, with less concern for its classic origins,
describes as "an almost medieval monarchy in which the
power of the king is held in check by a responsible
^Benjamin, p. 573.
170
hereditary nobility and a free people” (pp. 575-576).
Thus, while Fink analyzes the evolution of the clas
sical and "Gothic” concept of government and its relation
to Gulliver, and Dircks emphasizes the more contemporary
Lockean aspects, Benjamin establishes the notion that
educated readers of Swift's day would have immediately
recognized Swift's presentation of two contrasting politi
cal opinions, those of Machiavelli and those of the Renais
sance humanist, "the merits of which had been contested for
generations by Swift's day” (p. 572).
Herbert Davis supports Benjamin's view of Swift's
belief in moral statecraft by pointing out Swift's faith in
"Nature's simple p l a n ."22 Swift, Davis holds, was
. . . conscious of certain movements in the affairs
of nations and peoples, which were entirely independ
ent of the guidance of their rulers, however skillful
they felt themselves to be in controlling events.
(p. 269)
Indeed, "Nature's simple plan," might work far better with
out the interference of cunning politicians or ambitious
generals or greedy moneychangers. Davis admits that this
may seem a rather n&ive and innocent point of view for so
22
"Some Free Hioughts of a Tory Dean," Virginia Quar
terly Review. XXII (1952), 258-272.
171
experienced a politician as Swift, yet he establishes it
as a part of the view of the King of Brobdingnag. The
Machiavellian Gulliver is, of course, duly shocked by such
a general state of innocent ignorance among the Brobding-
nagians, who had not "reduced Politiks into a Science, as
the more acute Wits of Europe had done" (p. 272).
Jeffrey Hart, a very recent analyst of political
theory in Gulliver, returns to the points established by
Case and re-emphasizes the implications in Gulliver of
Swift's view of the potential degeneration of all social
structures. As Hart points out,
In each description of the societies which Gulliver
visits, Swift carefully elucidates the relationship,
which exists in that society, between the present and
the past. ^
Lilliput has been corrupted by greed; Balnibarbi by the
idea that any change is for the better. Even the Yahoo had
seen better days, probably having come from England (p.
127). The Brobdingnagians, however, had improved their
state by following the wise policies instituted by the
grandfather of the current king. Hence, Hart postulates:
23
"The Idealogue as Artist: Some Motes on 'Gulli
ver's Travels,"' Criticism, II (Spring I960), 125.
172
Each of the degenerated human societies which Gulliver
visits had once been to some degree rational. Thus
we see . . . the Yahoo stands in the same relation
to Gulliver, a civilised human being, as Lilliput does
to it8 original, uncorrupted form; or again as Balni-
barbi does to that fragment of its past, Munodi's
estate; and this is the point, as the contemporary
England of Walpole does to that "institution" which,
as the King of Brobdingnag says, "in its original
might have been tolerable." (p. 127)
Not content with mere description of this cultural relativ
ism, Hart seeks to establish Swift's belief in a Platonic
realm of unchanging Truth from which men, at least eigh
teenth century men, were seemingly cut off. In Gulliver,
only the Houyhnhnms, horses not men, had access to the
realm of absolute Truth, and only the horses achieved a
condition of absolute order in their society, which human
society can never achieve, but which must be retained as
a corrective, a polemical ideal for man (p. 127). Only
through allegiance to such well-ordered social institutions
A /
would man be able to preserve a semblance of moral order.
Actually, the Yahoos represent what Englishmen will become
when they have ceased to strive toward an ideal of order,
^^Hart admits that his postulation of such a Platonic
element in Swift's political thought "runs counter, in a
sense to Quintana's firm assertion that after the early
verse the 'Platonic element--the contrast between our
world and a realm of perfect truth--never again appeared in
Swift's thought'" (p. 130).
173
sinking into disorder and irrationality. Thus, like Plato
and Dante, Swift conceived of politics and psychology as
interrelated--the corruptions of man and corruptions of
the state were synchronous (p. 129).
Hart concludes by echoing Edwin Benjamin's belief
that Swift's idea of society derives from the main tradi
tion of Renaissance Humanism, the King of Brobdingnag
embodying the same ideal of the virtuous ruler which one
finds in Erasmus's Christian Prince, in Elyot' s Govemour.
or in the Patriot King of Swift's friend, Bolingbroke. But
Swift's is a bitter picture:
For Swift was aware that the Renaissance was over,
and the Augustinian truth about human nature, which
had been combatted by Aquinas and effaced by the
Platonism emanating from the Florentine Academy,
were returning with a vengeance to the modem
world. (p. 133)
While his criticism is not related exclusively to
Gulliver, one other critic, Irvin Ehrenpreis, has been
significantly concerned with Swift as a political thinker.
2 S
In an article entitled "Swift on Liberty," Ehrenpreis
re-emphasizes Case's view that Swift stood essentially for
^ Journal of the History of Ideas. XIII (April
1952), 131-146.
174
the "Old Whig" principles all his life, and even adds that
every one of Swift's tenets can be followed to an imme
diate source in some publicist famous during the reigns of
the later Stuarts:
His belief in mixed government, his opposing of the
old, well-born, country families to the nouveau-riche
moneylenders and tradesmen, his resentment of the
rabble, and his loathing for oppression were all
typical of the late seventeenth century. Under these
he exhibits those neo-classical traits made familiar
by A. 0. Lovejoy as uniformitarianism, rationalistic
anti-intellectualism, and a negative philosophy of
history. (p. 146)
Ehrenpreis believes that Swift's ideal was a medieval com
munity in which political authority was combined with con
trol of land and people were wholly under the power of laws
which expressed their own customs and consent, the sover
eign sharing authority t*ith a legislative body and the body
politic undisturbed by partisan rivalries. Swift's concept
of freedom was thus built
. . . into the very shape of the state. . . . [In
this state] the citizen had a natural right to be
free vrfien he enjoyed the freedoms allowed him by a
natural government. If he demanded more, he was
making himself a tyrant. (p. 144)
However, Ehrenpreis concludes regretfully:
Not "an old redhair'd murd'ring Hag, a crazy Prelate,
and a royal Prude," but a vision turned early, firmly,
nobly, and mistakenly to the past, ruined his career.
(p. 146)
175
Perhaps the remarkable thing about political criti
cism in the realm of the history of ideas is the remarkable
unanimity of opinion. Each writer supplements the work of
his predecessors. The picture of Swift, which finally
emerges, is that of a Renaissance Humanist dedicated to the
balanced state, without faction, without the intrigue of
statecraft, and without the political excesses possible by
the unfortunate extension of some of Locke's principles.
It is also the picture of a writer holding onto the politi
cal past rather than moving with his times. Viewed from a
modern perspective, such a writer may be called a Tory-
anarchist, but from the perspective of history, Puritan
Republican or Classical Humanist may be more appropriate
titles.
Scientific Thought
The essays of Marjorie Nicholson and Nora Mohler on
Gulliver and science, published between 1935 and 1937, are
among the earliest and most significant contributions to
the history of ideas in the criticism of Gulliver. As
scientific sleuths, they established the relationship
between the details of Book III of Gulliver and the partic
ular exploits of eighteenth century scientists as recorded
176
in the Philosophic Transactions of the Royal Society.
Their greater contribution, however, was their elucidation
of the general relations between Gulliver and eighteenth
century science.
Dr. Nicholson presented Gulliver as the great example
of the effect of the microscope upon the imagination.
Gulliver is, she states,
the best of microscopical satires, both because its
author was the greatest satirist of the age, and
because Gulliver's Travels is a classic illustration
of the extent to which the new instrument affected
the technique of an artist. In this respect,
Gulliver1s Travels is a complement to Paradise Lost.
. . .As Milton produced a new kind of cosmic poetry,
a drama of interstellar space, which could not have
been composed before the telescope, so Gulliver * s
Travels could not have been written before the
periodof the microscope nor by a man who had not
felt both the fascination and the repulsion of a new
Nature shown by a new instrument. °
This fascination and repulsion of grossly magnified
nature is everywhere evident in Gulliver. Gulliver studied
the Lilliputians as the virtuosi studied ant-hills and bee
hives, and as he pondered these, he suffered a dislocating
sense of his own grossness and disproportion. Yet, as the
Lilliputians were to Gulliver, so Gulliver was to the
26"The Microscope and English Imagination." In
Science and Imagination (Ithaca, New York, 1956), p. 194.
177
Brobdingnagians. As he to them, so were the Giants with
their grossly magnified pores to him. It all depended
upon who held the glass or, perhaps, which lens of Gulli
ver's "pocket perspective" was used; for this particular
mechanism, like our opera-glasses, magnified at one end
and afforded far sight with the other. The effect was
unsettling in the extreme, and as man swung between the two
extremes, he sensed himself a being as Pope had said
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer; . . .
(Essay on Man. II, 3, 4, 7-9)
Man had always known that nothing is great or little
except by comparison, but, as Dr. Nicholson points out:
Never did he come to comprehend that truth as in the
days when first the telescope and then the micro
scope confounded his vision, when instruments made
him feel himself now lord of creation, now gross,
uncouth, disproportionate, a lonely mite crawling
in a universe too vast for his comprehension--when
instruments, in short, showed man, as Lemuel Gulli
ver found him and as Swift's contemporary described
him, "the glory, jest, and riddle of the world."
(P. 199)
Dr. Nicholson notes that the "metaphor of the micro
scope" as a clue to Swift's trick of perspective was
observed by Sir Walter Scott in his edition of the Works,
178
and that Eddy had pointed out that the analogy had been
used in the contemporary French translation by Des Fon-
27
taines in 1727. However, Miss Nicholson is the first to
link Gulliver centrally with this particular scientific
development.
Nicholson and Mohler joined forces in the two arti
cles, "The Scientific Background of Swift’s 'Voyage to
Laputa,'" and "Swift's 'Flying Island* in the Voyage to
Laputa.1 1 Here, in addition to detecting specific sources,
they sought to demonstrate the widespread interest in
scientific discovery among English men of letters as, in
large part, a natural effect of the rapid strides made by
science during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Many literary men attended the meetings of the Royal
Society, some even claiming the title of virtuosi. In
addition, the Society's Philosophical Transactions were
widely read, as were various abridged editions (pp. 114-
115).
In their discussion of Swift's satire on mathematics,
Nicholson and Mohler make it clear that though some critics
think such satire peculiar to Swift, in reality, the
^ Critical Study, p. 197.
179
Laputans simply reflect
the rapidly growing interest in the seventeenth
century in mathematics, especially as embodied in
the work of Kepler, Descartes, and Leibniz, and a
persistent attitude of the seventeenth century lay
man toward the "uselessness" of physical and mathe
matical learning. ®
Even Addison, in general more responsive than Swift to the
new concepts of his day, lost no chance for laughter at
impractical experimenters and absent-minded mathematicians
(p. 118). Nor is Swift's tendency to combine mathematics
and music as the butt of his satire in Laputa unique.
Here, again, Swift reflects the general attitude of Kepler,
Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz, and one Dr. John Wallis,
who had contributed many papers to the Royal Society pro
pounding analogies between music and mathematics. In this
identification, the Laputans are simply allied with those
of Swift's contemporaries, who were resisting the notion of
music as the handmaiden of Language (pp. 120-121), and
their particular musico-mathematical notions may be con
veniently found in a paper by the Reverend T. Salmon on
"the Theory of Musik reduced to Arithmetical and Geometri-
^®"Scientific Background," In Science and Imagina
tion, p. 117.
180
cal Progressions” (p. 122).
As a whole, Nicholson and Mohler find the Voyage to
Laputa to be Swift's "record of the greatness and the limi
tations of his time.” In closing their analysis of this
voyage, they cite the views of Swift's contemporary, John,
Earl of Orrery, who found in the Laputan adventures, '"a
real picture embellished with such latent wit and humour'”
and also a more serious message:
"those determinations in philosophy, which at the pres
ent seem to the most knowing men to be perfectly well
founded and understood, are in reality unsettled, or
uncertain, and may perhaps some ages hence be as much
decried, as the axioms of Aristotle are at this day.
Sir Isaac Newton and his notions may hereafter be out
of fashion. There is a kind of mode in philosophy
as well as other things.” (Quoted by Nicholson-
Mohler, p. 154)
The scientific relativism of the nicroscope is here ex
tended to the temporal relativism of philosophic and
scientific knowledge.
The second article by Nicholson and Mohler suggests
still another area of relativism derived by Swift from the
area of scientific thought, and one previously undetected
by critics. In Book III, Swift is still concerned with
relationships, but
less the relation of man to the new universe than the
relationships exhibited in that universe itself— the
181
physical laws by which the planets and the stars In
their courses are bound In mutual Interdependence,
great and small equally obeying these Inevitable
laws.29
From such observations, Leibniz created a philosophy; Pope
and Young found object lessons. Swift deduced the obvious
political lesson regarding the ironic interrelation of
countries, that the big and strong are sometimes dependent
upon the small. He also observed a further irony--the
scientist's belief that man, by learning the secrets of
nature, might conceivably govern nature. This he illus
trates in Laputa where:
the art of man has seized upon the fundamental prin
ciple of the natural law of magnetism and has em
ployed it in such a way that the "little world,"
instead of being at the mercy of Balnibarbi, has
come to dominate the great world below, shutting it
by art even from the orderly processes of nature.
(P. 419)
Thus, science was to Swift, as to many of his con
temporaries, a cornerstone of philosophy. It instructed
in the confusing relativism of man's universe and man's
position in it, and in the interrelatedness of large and
small in response to the ultimate and controlling laws of
^"Swift's 'Flying Island.'" In Annals of Science.
II (1937), 419.
182
nature. In pointing out these concepts, Nicholson and
Mohler emphasized the positive contributions of science to
Swift1s writing, an approach peculiar to twentieth century
30
criticism.
To this basic contribution of Nicholson and Mohler,
G. R. Potter's treatment of "Swift and Natural Science,"
Philological Quarterly. XX (January 1941), 99-118, adds
little. Like them, he interprets the Third Voyage as
Gulliver's introduction to the idea "that man's pride in
his purely intellectual attainments, in his progress as a
conqueror of nature and discoverer of her secrets, is
absurd" (p. 116). However, he goes on to berate Swift as
lacking the very qualities, which Nicholson and Mohler
took great pains to establish. He feels that despite
Swift's obvious knowledge of satiric literature on natural
science, and his full knowledge of what was happening in
the field, in large measure through friendships with lead
ers in the field (p. 114), Swift "did not take the natural
sciences seriously as objects for condemnation," and he
lacked "any clear sense of the philosophical importance
which natural science has in relation to the ideas men
live by" (p. 117). Louis Landa, though he does not men
tion Nicholson and Mohler, raises strong objections to
Potter's position in a review of Potter's article, "Swift
and Natural Science Reviewed," Philological Quarterly. XXI
(April 1942), 219-220. Granting that Potter performs a
service to his indication of the extent and sources of
Swift's knowledge of science and his presentation of evi
dence that Swift was not blindly contemptuous of its aims,
Landa finds Potter guilty of oversimplification of Swift's
total perspective. He feels that Potter fails to stress
sufficiently Swift's basic concern with the corruptions of
science, rather than with science itself. He also feels
that, while it would be foolish to deny that Swift's
greater interest was "in man as a social animal, man in
his political and ethical aspects," Swift could hardly, as
a wide reader and a person living in "an atmosphere charged
183
Philosophical and Religious Thought
Attempts to relate Gulliver to the philosophic and
religious aspects of the history of ideas are both ubiqui
tous and amorphous. To bring some order into the area,
three subdivisions of the material need to be made: (1 )
views of man, (2) views of reason and rationalism, and (3)
views of Christianity.
Views of man
As every study of Swift is well aware, Swift wrote to
his friend, Pope, shortly before the publication of Gulli
ver, the following indictment of man:
But principally I hate and detest that animal called
man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas,
and so forth. This is the system upon which I have
governed myself for many years. . . . I have got
materials towards a treatise, proving the falsity of
that definition animal rationale, and to show it
should be only rationis capax. Upon this great foun
dation of misanthropy, though not in Timon's manner,
the whole building of my Travels is erected; and I
never will have peace of mind till all honest men are
of my opinion. (Ball, Corres., III, 277)
Generations of critics have sought to put this attitude in
perspective. Some have merely inveighed against Swift.
with the implications of Coperaican science," have
escaped "a strong awareness of the impact of science on
the ideas men live by."
184
Others, as has been indicated in some detail in Chapter III,
have tried to explain the reasons, personal or psychologi
cal, for such a low opinion of man. Those working with the
history of ideas have found their explanation in parallels
between Swift and the philosophers, whether they be philo
sophic literati or professional philosophers.
As early as Morley's edition of Gulliver (1893),
Swift's view was juxtaposed to that of Bernard de Mande-
ville, whose The Fable of the Bees, of Private Vices.
Public Benefits (1714) was designed to illustrate the es
sential vileness of human nature. Morley, however, is more
interested in the social indictments of Swift's contem-
31
poraries, and fails to develop the parallel.
By 1919, Paul Elmer More is attempting a contrast
between the cynical views of Grub Street writers, led by
Swift, and those of Bolingbroke,
one of the leaders of the deistic optimism, which
was running parallel with the cynical movement and
was in the end to supplant it.32
But More does not develop the point.
^ Gulliver. pp. 14-15.
•^With the Wits (Boston, 1919), p. 109.
185
The first critic to grapple with the issue of Swift's
view in relation to a philosophic tradition is Ernest
Bembaum in the "Introduction" to his edition of Swift,
published in 1920. Here Bembaum attacks those who use
the terms "cynical," "misanthropic," and "pessimistic"
indiscriminately, and recommends that they read Lucretius,
Hobbes, or Schopenhauer, and contrast them with Swift.
Bembaum also suggests that Swift's view is more hopeful
than Mandeville's, with its belief in the natural egotism
of man as the basis of civilization and prosperity. What
conditioned Swift's view was his observation of the rise
of what he considered the heresy of the instinctive good-
33
ness of mankind. Bernbaum says,
. . . had the cynic Mandeville gained a comparable
following, Swift . . . migiht have expatiated on vi
sions of men achieving their noblest potentialities.
But since it was the sentimentalists of Lord Shaftes
bury's persuasion who were voluble and ascendant,
Swift arose, in the majesty of insulted common sense,
to refute their adulation of man by reasserting the
eternal verity that man was merely rationis capax.
^This heresy appeared particularly in Shaftesbury's
Characteristics (1711), Steele's sentimental comedies,
and Bolingbroke's influence upon Pope, which eventuated in
the latter*s concept of this as the "best of all possible
worlds" (p. x).
186
And so glaringly did he reveal our failure to realize
our capacities for spiritual and rational existence,
that mankind, which renders lip-service to the love
of truth, in its wrath alleged that he denied such
capacities altogether. In short, it said of Swift
what was true of Mandeville. (p. xi)
Gulliver, Bembaum asserts, rests upon assumptions
which a true cynic would deride. Swift, like the Lilli
putians, "'supposed truth, justice, temperance and the
like, to be in every man's power'" (p. xi). He believed,
also, that Reason is sufficient to govern a rational crea
ture and, while it is vain to speculate on metaphysical
points, the needful virtues are knowable by man. Thus, to
Bernbaum, Swift occupies a mid-point between the two camps
of his day. He did not, like Mandeville, reject altru
istic virtues as contemptibly dubious ideas, and he did
not, like Schopenhauer, reject all hope of happiness as
illusory. Yet, neither did he believe man by nature benev
olent and the inevitable creator of social good.-^ Swift,
^Bernbaum's thoughtful analysis stands in sharp
contrast to the sort of comment against which he is in
veighing. H. L. Mencken phrases the view more vigorously
than some, but he illustrates the irresponsible side of
attempts to establish a relationship between Swift and the
tradition: "Premature and lonely forerunner of the modem
age--a Voltaire bom in the wrong country and a couple of
generations too soon, he was the first great enemy of the
187
the humanist, compared man as he Is with man as he ought
to be, and assumed a tone of bitter indignation, quite
foreign to the tone of a true pessimist.^
While Bembaum suggested a general context for
Swift's view of man, T. 0. Wedel in a discussion of "The
Philosophical Background of Gulliver's Travels" (1926),
explored more fully the setting for Swift's views. Wedel
establishes at once that the reading public of 1726 was in
immemorial anthropocentric delusion." He saw "homo
sapiens" not as "a god with a few lamentable defects; he
saw a poor worm with no virtues at all . . . a coward and
an idiot, a fraud and a scoundrel." If this "preposterous
quadruped" was made in the image of God, "then God Himself
was not fit to be lord of the noble horse, the august
lion, the brave and honest rat." "Introduction" to Gulli
ver *s Travels (New York, 1925), pp. v-vi.
^William Lyon Phelps, "Note on Gulliver," Yale
Review, XVII (October 1927), 96, observed a similar opti
mism: "All through Gulliver's Travels, whether it is the
pettiness or the grossness or the pedantry or the conceit
or the general baseness of humanity that is being attacked,
there is ever present the implication that the world might
be fit to live in and that man might be a noble, high-
minded creature, if he would live up to his best possibili
ties instead of following his worst." Almost thirty years
later, Samuel Monk in "The Pride of Lemuel Gulliver,"
Sewanee Review. IVIII (Winter 1955), 53, observing that
Swift disassociates his misanthropy from that of Plutarch's
Tinton of Athens, concludes that it is "not paradoxical to
say that it [Swift's satire] arises from philanthropy, not
misanthropy, from idealism as to what man might be, not
from despair at what he is."
188
no mood
. . . to put a proper value upon a work which spoke
of homo sapiens as "the most pernicious race of little
odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon
the surface of the earth."3®
Just a year before (1725), in Swift's own Dublin, Hutche
son's first panegyric essay on the soundness of man's
benevolent instincts had appeared and had at once become
"a classic expression for the century of the new optimistic
creed" (p. 434). Yet, a few generations earlier, as Wedel
observes, Swift's view would have been accepted calmly:
Pascal would have understood him, as would La Roche
foucauld and Boileau; so would Montaigne; so would
Bayle. For the transition from the seventeenth to
the eighteenth century was experiencing a revolution
in ethical thought. . . . The pessimism of Pascal
had given way to the optimism of Leibnitz; the theory
of self-love of La Rochefoucauld to the theory of
benevolence of Hutcheson and Hume; the scepticism
of Montaigne to the rationalism of Locke, Toland and
Clarke; the dualism of Nature and Grace to a monistic
inclusion of Nature under the rule of a beneficent
God; the bold warfare between atheism and faith to a
mere gentlemen's quarrel between revealed and natural
religion. In fact, it is this revolutionary back
ground which alone can explain Swift's purpose in
writing Gulliver's Travels. (pp. 435-436)
Although a more flattering view than Swift's hatred of the
animal called man had appeared as early as the seventeenth
century, Swift's view had been "the prevailing judgment on
36Studies in fliilology. XXIII (October 1926), 434.
189
human nature from Montaigne to Locke, among men of the
world as well as ascetic Christians" (p. 438).
Religiously, Swift's world was witnessing an avowed
or tacit denial of the old doctrine of original sin. Locke
and the Deists had provided man with a new trust in Reason,
while the Cambridge Flatonists and Shaftesbury were estab
lishing his moral sense, even in the realm of the passions.
Also, in an era convinced of the existence of a beneficent
deity, nothing could seem more natural than a consequent
goodness in his creation (pp. 439, 441).
In the face of these two conflicting traditions,
Wedel amplifies Bernbaum1s conviction that Swift holds a
middle position. Pointing out that, while Swift's Yahoos
have a marked resemblance to Hobbes's men in a state of
nature and the Houyhnhnms to Locke's rational creatures,
Gulliver is clearly neither a Hobbesian Yahoo nor a
Lockean Houyhnhnm. Part beast and part reason, Gulliver
is, says Wedel, "Swift's allegorical picture of the dual
nature of man" (p. 442). Not Houyhnhnm, animal rationale,
yet not Yahoo, he is rationis capax. In this distinction,
Swift appears to be attacking the new optimism at its very
190
37
root--man’s pride in reason. '
Samuel Monk supports this general distinction between
man as animal capax rationis and man as animal rationale
as central to the interpretation of Gulliver, suggesting
that Swift probably had in mind Descarte's failure to rec
ognize
that God made man a little lower than the angels
(pure intelligences) and consequently capable of
only enough reason to order his world here and to
find his way, with God’s grace, to the next. ®
Monk, however, is less concerned with Swift's views
of the essential nature of man than with his views of man's
cosmic position and his perverse attitude of pride. Monk
proposes, as did Nicholson, though without her reference to
37pages 441-443. Wedel in 1926 suggested: "The rela
tion of Swift to Hobbes and to Locke is a subject for
separate investigation. On the whole, I think . . . he
stands nearer to Locke. In 1957, David P. French took up
the suggestion to investigate, but came to an opposite con
clusion. In "Swift and Hobbes--a Neglected Parallel,"
Boston University Studies in English. Ill (Winter, 1957),
244-255, French states that both Hobhes add Swift "write on
the assumption that men are motivated by selfishness; both
assume that government is as absolute as force can render
it; both define law in terms of compulsion; and both state
categorically that men should follow the government reli
gion even, if necessary, at the expense of a hypocritical
split between inward belief and outward conformity" (p.
255). French does not, however, assume that Hobbes was
necessarily Swift's source in any of these attitudes.
38"Pride," p. 53.
190
root--man's pride in reason. ^
Samuel Monk supports this general distinction between
man as animal canax rationis and man as animal rationale
as central to the interpretation of Gulliver, suggesting
that Swift probably had in mind Descarte's failure to rec
ognize
that God made man a little lower than the angels
(pure intelligences) and consequently capable of
only enough reason to order his world here and to
find his way, with God's grace, to the next. ®
Monk, however, is less concerned with Swift's views
of the essential nature of man than with his views of man's
cosmic position and his perverse attitude of pride. Monk
proposes, as did Nicholson, though without her reference to
^Pages 441-443. Wedel in 1926 suggested: "The rela
tion of Swift to Hobbes and to Locke is a subject for
separate investigation. On the whole, I think . . . he
stands nearer to Locke. In 1957, David P. French took up
the suggestion to investigate, but came to an opposite con
clusion. In "Swift and Hobbes--a Neglected Parallel,"
Boston University Studies in English. Ill (Winter, 1957),
244-255, French states that both Hobbes afid Swift "write on
the assumption that men are motivated by selfishness; both
assume that government is as absolute as force can render
it; both define law in terms of compulsion; and both state
categorically that men should follow the government reli
gion even, if necessary, at the expense of a hypocritical
split between inward belief and outward conformity" (p.
255). French does not, however, assume that Hobbes was
necessarily Swift's source in any of these attitudes.
38"Pride," p. 53.
191
the scientific background of the century, the currency of
the notion that man occupies "an anomalous, a middle state
in creation . . . the transitional point between the purely
intelligent and the purely sensual" (p. 55). Man is the
middle link in
. . . one vast "chain of being," descending from
God, through an almost infinite number of pure intel
ligences, to man, and thence through the lower forms
of life. (p. 55)
Or, in Pascal's somewhat darker perception of man's dis
proportionate state:
What is man in nature? A nothing in comparison with
the Infinite, an All in comparison with Nothing, a
mean between nothing and everything. (p. 57)
Such is the lesson to be learned by Gulliver in Books I
and II.
All is well so long as man recognizes his position
and exploits his capability (rationis capax') to the utmost,
but to have an unrealistic view of the potentialities of
man, to attribute a perfection or a position to man, which
he can never achieve, is to indulge in pride--"the beset
ting sin of man and angels, the sin that disrupts the
natural and supernatural order of God's creation" (p. 54).
It is also the besetting sin of Gulliver.
Many years before Monk, another critic concerned with
192
the history of ideas, Lucius Elder, had detected the cen
trality of pride as a component in Swift's view of man, but
he wrote not on the pride of Gulliver, but on the "Pride
of the Yahoo." 7 With a literalism, which would worry
later critics who perceive irony in the situation, Elder
quotes the prideful Gulliver's final words on the Yahoos:
"but when I behold a lump of deformity, and diseases
both in body and mind, smitten with pride, it imme
diately breaks all the measures of my patience; neither
shall 1 ever be abl'e to comprehend how such an ani
mal, and such a vice, could tally together." (p. 206)
Elder suggests that, if other writers of the time had not
found the same fault, this charge would not stand out with
particular force in comparison with the many other seem
ingly more serious charges made against man in the guise of
Yahoo. But it is in fact an idea, which has "its basis and
analogues in the speculative theory of the Enlightenment"
(p. 206). Citing Hume, Hobbes, Spinoza, Pope, and others,
Elder contends that Swift's use of the term pride as his
penultimate charge against Yahoo, seems to carry the cumu
lative venom of diverse antipathies:
In general, pride is condemned because it is unsocial;
and because it is based on ignorance and falsehood.
In particular, first, pride was made to bear the
39Modern Language Notes. XXXV (April 1920), 206-211.
193
odium and responsibility of giving rise to cruelty
and madness, and other dependent moral evils; and,
second, as a violent passion itself, it was regarded,
at least potentially, as the negation of reason and
virtue. (p. 206)
While, in general, critics from 1890 to I960 have
linked Swift's views of man with the more "tough-minded"
conventions of thought prior to his own time, a few have
caught a note of cultural, almost Rousseauistic, primi
tivism. In 1920, Wedel remarks rather uneasily in a foot
note :
The problem of Swift's primitivism . . . is not easy
of solution. In fact, the primitivistic tradition
of the seventeenth century invites further investiga
tion. (p. 446)
G. M. Webster in 1932 cites the Yahoo's lack of the unnat
ural vices of the European Yahoo and Gulliver's final
statement that he might become reconciled with "'Yahoo-kind
in general--if they would be content with those vices and
follies only which nature hath entitled them to'" (pp.
451-452), as momentary and oblique references to the quali
ties of the Noble Savage. James Rouff in 1956 notes the
anti-intellectual and nonaesthetic qualities of the illit
erate Houyhnhnms and proposes that, perhaps, Swift is using
the technique of Sir Thomas More, who, in his Utopia,
depicted a wholly pagan culture in order to reveal by ironic
194
contrast the moral failures of a Christian Europe. Men
with the presumed advantage of a great cultural heritage
have not equaled the accomplishments of simple illiterate
horse sense.^
The significance of all these contributions to an
understanding of the traditions regarding the nature of man
in which and against which Swift was writing can be high
lighted by reference to the remarks of Merrill Clubb. Clubb
has pointed out that eighteenth century notions of benevo
lence and nineteenth century Victorian prudery were
responsible for much of the critical misunderstanding of
the allegory of Gulliver and for the charges of misanthropy
41
so universally levelled against Swift. The limitations
of eighteenth and nineteenth century critics were the limi
tations of their particular views of human nature. Twen
tieth century critics working in the tradition of the his
tory of ideas have effected a release from such limitations
by giving to criticism an adequate historical perspective.
40
"Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Part IV, Chapter III,"
Explicator. XV (December 1956), item 20.
41"The Criticism of Gulliver's 'Voyage to the Houy-
hnhnms,' 1726-1914." In Stanford Studies in Language and
Literature (Palo Alto, 1941), pp. 212, 224-225.
195
Even the view of human nature peculiar to the twentieth
century--that of the Freudian psychoanalyst--need not dis
tort the understanding of the twentieth century reader, who
is aware of the traditional qualities in Swift's views of
human nature, Bernbaum and Wedel have shown Swift's middle
course between the Scylla and Charybdis of Shaftsbury and
Mandeville, Locke and Hobbes. Monk and Elder have empha
sized Swift's preoccupation with human susceptibility to
the sin of pride. Wedel, Webster, and Rouff have acknow
ledged a paradoxical tinge of primitivism in a work, which
generally avoids benevolism and sentimentalism. It is
evident, however, that even this primitivism simply under
scores Swift's realization of the level to which human
nature may fall when afflicted by pride in its own civilized
accomplishments.
Views of reason and rationalism
Critical interest in the relation between Gulliver
and the history of philosophic ideas includes more than the
establishment of Swift's view of sinful, prideful man. It
also encompasses Swift's view of reason and rationalism.
All eighteenth century rationalism was related to the
overwhelming success of the Newtonian mathematical,
196
mechanical interpretation of Nature, which assumed the
possibility of discovering a natural order in every aspect
of life, an order \Aiich would be both simple and all-
embracing. The mysteries which defied man's reason and
man's perception of an ordered universe were either denied
or declared irrelevant, improper concerns for man, and the
"common sense" available to every man became the normative
ideal in all areas. Scientific rationalism, which expressed
itself in the mathematical world order of Newton, was
paralleled by (1 ) social rationalism in the systematic
formulations of Locke regarding constitutional liberties
and rights and (2 ) religious rationalism, which was ex
pressed in a set of doctrines deduced by the unaided nat
ural reason of man from his observation of the laws of
nature. Though the orthodox religious leaders still sup
plemented these doctrines with insistence upon a comple
mentary system of revelation, the radicals, known as Deists,
generally insisted upon the sufficiency of natural and
rational religion.^
^See j. h . Randall, The Making of the Modem Mind
(Cambridge, Mass., 1940), pp. 254-306, for a full treatment
of Rationalism.
197
T. 0. Wedel, in 1926, distinguished between the
rationalism of the eighteenth century and that of Renais
sance humanism in terms of their respective views of rea
son. The Renaissance humanists maintained "a skeptical
balancing of reason against faith including reason itself
43
among the objects of doubt." Eighteenth century ration
alism eliminated doubts about human reason, adopting the
Stoic' 8 pride in the efficacy of reason, and went on to
deify it (p. 446). Wedel concludes that Swift "was a
rationalist with no faith in reason" (p. 449). In other
words, Swift's rationalism was, like his political views,
that of a Renaissance humanist.
Some years later, Walter Watkins considered more
fully the problem of defining Swift's concept of reason.
He found definition difficult, but necessary in order to
resolve the paradox of a thinker, who is "at once a wor
shipper of Reason and an antirationalist. He decided
that Swift's concept was twofold. Reason among the
^T. 0. Wedel, "Philosophical Background of Gulli
ver's Travels." Studies in thilology, XXIII (October
1926), 446.
^ Perilous Balance (Cambridge, England, 1939), p.
361.
198
Houyhnhnms of Book IV is essentially intuitive revelation,
completely independent of intellectual argument or logic.
It is "the faculty in man which enables God to reveal
religion to him" (p. 361). On the other hand, reason in
its lower manifestation is "discursive reason," which is
"discolored by passion and interest" and used by man to
rationalize his self-interest (p. 361), or to achieve such
nonsensical schemes as are enumerated in Book III of
Gulliver. Thus, Watkins observes,
The dichotomy of spirit and flesh is reflected for
Swift in pure and impure reason, the latter completely
dominated by the flesh, the former a faculty of the
soul. (p. 362)
With Watkins, one is immediately aware of two points.
First, Swift' 8 views of reason appear primarily in two
portions of Gulliver--the accounts of the "intellectuals"
in Book III and the presentation of the Houyhnhnms in Book
IV. Second, the central factor conditioning criticism of
Swift's views of reason is the critic's evaluation of the
Houyhnhnms. If the critic, like Watkins, assumes that
Swift presents the Houyhnhnms as rational ideal, he will
believe that Swift is "a worshipper of Reason." If, on the
other hand, the critic assumes that the Houyhnhnms are
objects of satire rather than veneration, their manifests-
199
tions of reason will not be accepted as representations of
Swift's ideal.
When, in 1940, Gordon McKenzie gave even more de
tailed attention to Swift's concepts of reason, he followed
Watkins' belief that "nowhere is their importance so clear
and their use so specific as in the Voyage to the Houyhn
hnms. He also followed Watkins in the assumption that
the Houyhnhnms represent Swift's rational ideal. McKenzie
found that reason among the Houyhnhnms is not conceived, as
it is today, as a "process," but rather as an "immediate
conviction," a view strongly suggestive of Descartes'
"rational intuition" of clear and distinct ideas (p. 104).
He also noted a second variation from present conceptions
of reason, namely, that Houyhnhnm reason is not only imme
diate, but ultimately and absolutely right--"a certain
touchstone of truth" (p. 105). These two aspects of Swift's
use of reason involve a third. Not only is reason immedi
ate and right,
^"Swift: Reason and Some of Its Consequences." In
Five Studies in Literature, ed. B. H. Bronson (Berkeley,
1940), p. 104. McKenzie cites the 0. E. D. definition as
proof of his contention that reason is customarily con
ceived of as a process involving inferences and not
assumed to be a necessarily infallible guide to truth (p.
103).
200
. . . it is extremely simple, unqualified by those
conflicts with prejudice, passion, interest, and
error, \Aiich are commonplaces of experience in the
ordinary world. (p. 106)
Endowed with such reason, the Houyhnhnms have "a knowledge,
absolute, perfectly achieved, and static, of what is right"
(p. 106), and have no need for further religious prac
tices.^6
While such a view of reason is at variance with the
usual twentieth century definition of reason as "process,"
it is, as McKenzie points out, by no means novel or untra-
ditional:
. . . the history of philosophy in Greek and Roman
times reveals many occurrences of this use. Platonic
thought, particularly as modified by such neo-Platonists
as Plotinus, Proclus, and Iamblichus, produced . . .
conceptions of reason as giving immediate knowledge.
The stoic doctrine that the rational part of the soul
is a consubstantial emanation from the divine world-
reason resulted in regarding every form of right
^John Middleton Murry subscribes to a similar notion
of Swift's concept of reason: ". . . it is evident that the
'reason' which the Houyhnhnms possess, and which Gulliver
in their society and by force of their example comes
partly to acquire, is not the faculty of ratiocination at
all. It is the gift of discerning and doing what is good.
. . . Capable of 'reason' in this sense, can only mean
capable of developing in oneself a discernment of the good,
and a devotion to pursuing it, and simultaneously of devel
oping an incapacity to pursue evil. . . . This 'reason'
exists, according to Swift, as a mere latent potentiality
in humans, and only becomes operative when the mind is free
from passion or interest . . . of what Santayana calls
'animal egotism"' (p. 339).
201
knowledge as a kind of divine revelation. In the
writings of the Apologists very similar conceptions
appear frequently. Justin, for instance, held that
God has revealed himself internally through the
rational nature of man; and Athenagoras believed that
revelation is to be regarded as truly reasonable, and,
being so, is to be not demonstrated but only be
lieved. (p. 109)
Such a view of reason also existed within the Established
i
jChurch of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
McKenzie shows that despite Swift's distaste for metaphys
ics and subtle argument and his general allegiance to the
orthodox in religion, his use of reason is rather more like
that of the Cambridge Platonists than that of the middle-
of-the-road theologians, such as Fuller and Taylor or the
extremely orthodox Tuchney (pp. 110-113). McKenzie hastens
to deny that he is making any claim that Swift either
borrowed his notions of reason from the Platonists or was
aware that he was using a concept of reason from such an
uncongenial source. Apparently, it did not occur to
McKenzie, any more than it did to Watkins, that Swift might
be using an unacceptable view for satiric ends.
By 1942, F. M. Darnall waivers uncertainly concerning
the seriousness with which Swift presents the Houyhnhnms as
a rational ideal. Postulating that Swift found the great
issue of life "not between goodness and sin--they are vague
202
and relative terms--but between reason and passion," and
that "the Houyhnhnms symbolize a civilization based purely
on reason ... a form of stoicism" (p. 62), Darnell grants
that the life of the Houyhnhnms was "an exaggeration for
emphasis" (p. 63). Swift was really saying to his genera
tion, which had been so eager and self-satisfied in accept
ing the new optimism concerning man,
Here is what your civilization really is. You may
become a Yahoo; in fact, you are by nature already
a Yahoo, inclined to be controlled only by passion
and instinct. But, with the use of reason, the part
of God in you, you may achieve salvation.
Darnell goes on to say that Gulliver had risen above the
Yahoos, but still retained some of their characteristics;
whereas the horses, "symbolic of sanity and intelligence,"
suggest that man "may rise to a sane, strife-free, poverty-
free, disease-free, passionless life" (p. 63). This view
seems to imply that the life of the Houyhnhnms represents
an ideal rather than an exaggeration. However, Darnell
does open the door to the possibility that Swift was not
presenting a literal ideal.
J. M. Bullitt recalls Watkins' distinctions between
4 7 "01d Wine in New Bottles," South Atlantic Quarterly.
XLI (January 1942), 63.
203
the discursive reason of the logician and the "intuitive
reason" of the Houyhnhnms, but objects that "the reason of
the Houyhnhnms is intuitive only to the extent that it is
A Q
immediate, without long and intricate circumlocution."
It is not subjective and private, but depends upon the
senses for information. Bullitt states that for Swift the
purpose of reason was simply "the discovery of things in
their own nature," the elimination of
. . . the false coverings and artificial lights,
which delude the senses and deceive men into convert
ing the appearance of things into reality. (p. 142)
Bullitt is also less sure than either Watkins or McKenzie
about the assumption that the Houyhnhnms represent Swift's
ideal of reason. He points out Swift's frequent ridiculing
of the quasi-scientific attempts of Descartes and others to
convert "the multiplicity of human reason and emotions
. . . into the rigid framework of an abstract principle"
(p. 145), and says of reason among the Houyhnhnms:
Swift's conception of the "natural state" of man's
reason may not have been well-defined, even in his
own mind. Or, if his view of the natural state of
man is reflected in the uniformity in the social
structure of the Houyhnhnms, it is hard to see how
^ J o n a t h a n Swift and the Anatomy of Satire: A Study
of Satiric Technique (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), p. 128.
204
it differs from the rigidity of mind, which he is at
tacking here. (p. 147)
Bullitt' 8 position was extended beyond mere question by
Kathleen Williams. Assuming Swift's belief in the duality
of man--a creature of both passion and reason--Miss Wil
liams equates passions and nature, opposing nature to
reason. Man, in this regard, she finds quite different
from the Houyhnhnms in whom "nature and reason are one and
4 0
the same." Having no "natural affections," the Houyhn
hnms "are rational even in those things in which the wisest
man's passions inevitably and even perhaps rightly rule
him" (p. 281). Men are, from the Houyhnhnm point of view,
creatures "pretending to Reason," and
. . . man has no rig^it to lay claim to the life of
Reason, for in him nature and reason are not, as in
the Houyhnhnms identical, and there is that in his
nature which is outside reason's legitimate control.
(p. 281)
This, Gulliver does not realize, and in him Swift exempli
fies "the true misanthrope, who believes man should try to
rule himself by 'Reason alone"' (p. 283). Thus the
Houyhnhnms represent
^ " G u l l i v e r ' 8 Voyage to the Houyhnhnms," English
Literary History. XXI (September 1954), 280.
205
. . . an inadequate and inhuman rationalism, and the
negativeness of their blameless life is part of Swift's
deliberate intention. For us, with our less perfect
but also less limited nature, to try to live like them
would be to do as the Stoics did . . . It would mean
abandoning the purely human possibilities as well as
the disadvantages of our own nature.50
When James Brown, in 1954, viewed "Swift as Moral
ist," he found it a moot question, whether in Swift's
understanding of reason "man infers moral truth from
empirical observation or whether he perceives the moral
truth immediately."^ He was certain, however, as was
Bullitt, that Swift finds man capable of reason, whether
intuitive or inferential, and that Swift conceives of the
moral universe as coincident with the physical and per
ceived with the same senses. Recognizing that man must, to
some degree, act upon opinion, rather than empirically
derived knowledge, Swift, in keeping with his age, dis-
-^Page 284. Jacques Barzun considered the problem
of "reason" and came to two similar conclusions: first,
the paradox that "the use of reason only leads us to dis
cover that the groundwork of our existence is irrational"
(p. ix); and, second, that "if Houyhnhnm ways are held [by
the Portuguese captain, who believes that Gulliver has lost
his reason] to be unlife-like, "inhuman," impossible, is
that not further proof that reasonableness and life are
antithetical?" Gulliver's Travels (New York, 1934), p. x.
^ Philological Quarterly. XXXIII (October 1954),
372.
206
tinguishes between opinion as a necessary guide to action
and speculation as a function of reason, and made the
speculative aspect of reason the chief object of his satire,
particularly in Book III of Gulliver.
Brown's real contribution to an understanding of
Swift's view of reason is his attempt to resolve the
paradox, observed earlier by Wedel and Watkins, of Swift's
apparent belief "that man must be saved by reason" and at
the same time "that man's reason is not capable of saving
him" (Brown, p. 375). This paradox is resolved, according
to Brown, by Swift's inclusion of faith in his concept of
reason:
For Swift, both the failure to recognize truth and the
failure to practice faith are moral failures; perver
sion of reason or denial of faith results in vicious
action. Much of the difficulty in attempting to
understand Swift lies in a failure to see the psycho
logical unity of reason and faith; for the purposes
of determining action, knowledge gained by one is
equivalent to knowledge gained by the other. (p.
386)
The limited capacity of man's reason, which requires its
augmentation by faith, reflects the corrupting dualism of
body and spirit, and the "rather spectacular weakness of
reason in the face of passion" (p. 386). Thus, what Swift
really attacks or exposes is the perversion of reason, and
Brown concludes that in this sense Swift stands as a
207
"supreme rationalist" (p. 387).
Charles Peake shifts the perspective on reason some
what by discussing "Swift and the Passions.Peake dis
agrees with Quintana's statement in The Mind and Art of
Jonathan Swift that Swift was influenced by the neo-stoical
beliefs that '"the passions are utterly reprehensible;
reason must and can govern; the life vdiich is proper to man
is a life of unimpassioned reason'" (Peake, p. 169).
Accepting only the notion that "reason must and can govern,"
Peake establishes that Swift believed the
. . . passions were implanted in man for a divine
purpose; they supplied the motive power of all human
action, and consequently, although they might be per
verted into evil courses, their proper function was
to lead man to piety and virtue. (p. 170)
Hence, control and direction of the passions, not their
extirpation through the conquest of the lower self was the
duty of reason. Evil passions were not intrinsically bad,
merely improperly controlled and directed (p. 171). The
Yahoos are not man in his raw state, but allegorical crea
tures of a different order, who lack reason. The Houyhn
hnms, on the other hand, are not man in an ideal state, but
allegorical creatures representing reason or the life of
5^Modern Language Review. LV (April 1960), 169-180.
208
reason and, therefore, not at all Swift's picture of an
Ideal human society (p. 177).
Thus, while twentieth century criticism may have
variously defined Swift's concept of reason, it clearly
moved from the assumption of Watkins, McKenzie, and,
possibly, Darnall, that Swift presented the rationalism of
the Houyhnhnms as an ultimate ideal to denial of such
intent by Bullitt and Williams. This denial was accom
panied by more flexible definitions of Swift's concept of
reason, as in Brown's inclusion of faith as a part of
Swift's "reason" and Peake's notion of the working relation
between reason and the passions.
Views of Christianity
In general, twentieth century criticism has come to
emphasize that Swift's view of man is not that of a misan
thrope, but of a sensitive intelligence reacting against
the sentimental benevolence of his age. There also has
been a growing agreement that Swift expressed a middle-of-
the road view of man's reason and his relationship to a
rational ideal. Twentieth century criticism has not,
however, achieved unanimity of opinion on the degree to
which Swift spoke as a Christian in Gulliver. Indeed, the
209
issue becomes a rather complicated game of pigeonholing
Swift's views in the categories of Deist, Stoic, Skeptic,
or Christian. John Middleton Murry even suggests Mani-
chee.^3 The most zealous controversy in this area occurred
in the 1950's, and the critics who attribute a Christian
bias to Swift's views in Gulliver outnumber the advocates
of other biases. However, some significant voices have
been raised against the movement to Christianize the mes
sage of Gulliver.
Between 1890 and 1940, the question received slight
attention. The few defenses of Swift's Christianity were
hesitant; the attacks vigorous and reminiscent of the
nineteenth century. Henry Craik (1892) established an
early claim for Swift's essential Christianity:
In his hatred of avowed scepticism, in his intoler
ance of all that would lessen the influence of the
established religion as a system of police, in his
angry repudiation of all charges of freethinking,
Swift was partly true to his own conviction, but
partly also reflected what was one of the chief
traits of the religious apathy of his time. In
some respects his position, in this regard, is not
very different from that assumed by those whom pos
terity has justly agreed to reckon as typical free-
thinkers--by Bolingbroke, by Pope, by Chesterfield.
But Swift did not accompany it as they did, by a
53Swift (New York, 1955), p. 355
210
dallying with tenets subversive of the fundamental
positions of Christianity.^
Wedel (1926) approached the problem ambivalently.
Admitting that Swift's view of man,
as Wesley perceived and as Professor Bernbaum has
pointed out in our own time, is essentially the
view of the classical and Christian tradition . . .
(P. *50)
Wedel concludes:
Clearly Swift belongs with Montaigne, La Rochefou
cauld, and Bayle, among those who see man without
illusion. But can he also be said to be a disciple
of Pascal, the Christian? I do not think so . . .
Even Swift's Utopia is the Utopia of Locke, not
Plato's philosopher's kingdom, nor St. Augustine's
City of God. (p. 449)
Bertram Newman (1937) is equally tentative. He recognizes
that Swift "had no confidence in man's reason or in his
instincts" and that in relation to reason "he took his
55
stand on traditional theology against the Deists. Yet,
Newman also states that "the Stoic tranquillity" of the
bleak Utopia of the Houyhnhnms "was a state to which Swift
himself aspired" (p. 316). F. M. Darnell (1943) defended
Swift's belief in Immortality against the nineteenth
^ Selections from the Works of Jonathan Swift, ed.
Henry Craik (Oxford, 1893), pp. 34-35.
^ Jonathan Swift (London, 1937), p. 309.
211
century questioning of Leslie Stephen and Churton Col
lins, but Quintana (1936) goes only so far as to say that
Gulliver contains "no primitivism, no libertinism, no anti-
Christian element. " ^ 7
The attackers, on the other hand, were full of out
raged Victorian sensibility. Sidney Dark (1931) asserted:
Swift, a Dean of the English Church, arrived at the
end of his life at a point of view that is the
antithesis of the Christian religion. He denounced
everything that Christianity affirms. . . . The
pessimism of Swift . . . is sheer stupidity, the
result of conceit . . . No man can possibly believe
that his fellows are Yahoos unless his brain is ad
dled or his heart a stone. Optimism, or, as a
philosophic Tory would call it, sentimentalism, was
not the characteristic of the eighteenth century,
but Swift went farther than his contemporaries in
his contempt for his kind.-*®
G. Wilson Knight (1939) proposed that no defense of Swift's
fundamental orthodoxy could stand the test of such writings
as Gulliver. Swift was, Knight said,
56i«oid win in New Bottles," South Atlantic Review.
LXI (January 1932), 448.
^7In his 1955 Introduction. Quintana makes a similar
statement: "There is perhaps no other imaginary voyage as
free as is Gulliver's Travels of anything resembling anti
traditionalism. It contains no criticism of religion, no
anti-clericalism, and very little of even the minor details
of cultural primitivism" (p. 157).
5®Five Deans (London, 1931), p. 142.
212
a sceptical humanist who again and again tilts at
Christian belief. The geometrical wafer in this
book; the wars of Big-Endians and Little-Endians in
Lilliput, and the burial upside down among the
Lilliputians in hope of resurrection in the right
way up . . . all serve to establish his scepticism.
The Houyhnhnms have no r e l i g i o n .
Knight finds further evidence of Swift's dereliction in the
Struldbrugs with the red spots on their foreheads "which
witness Swift's slight sympathy for the mystical and
ritualistic" (p. 125).
In the forties, the pattern is reversed. The only
totally negative view of Swift as a man of religion is that
of George Orwell. Even Orwell concedes that "Swift's
pessimism, his reverence for the past, his incuriosity and
his horror of the human body" constitute "an attitude com
mon among religious reactionaries." But, he finds Swift
innocent of "having religious beliefs, at least in any
ordinary sense of the words" as he lacks any belief in life
after death, and his idea of goodness is "bound up with
republicanism, love of liberty, courage, 'benevolence'
(meaning, in effect, public spirit), 'reason' and other
■^"Swift and the Symbolism of Irony." In The Burning
Oracle (London, 1930), p. 125.
213
pagan qualities. On the other hand, McKenzie's treat
ment of Reason in 1940 rests upon the assumption that Swift
was no revolutionary in religion, but was "in favor of
preserving the form of the Established Church" in both
"its material perquisites" and its theology. ^
Two others who supported Swift's religious commit
ment were Louis Landa and Bernard Acworth. In his article,
"Swift, the Mysteries and Deism, " * * 2 Landa recognizes that
"the violent attacks upon Swift, the irreligious misan
thrope, are generally being discounted as ill considered,"
but he finds it still "is a striking fact that Swift, as a
Christian divine, has received comparatively little atten
tion" (p. 240). To help fill the gap, Landa points out
(1) Swift's "indictment of the prying intellect" as an
expression of the anti-intellectualism widely current in
Swift's day (p. 244); (2) Swift's defense of the Christian
mysteries against '"those who are enemies to all revealed
religion"' (p. 245), though he subscribed to the view that
the faith upon which the mysteries rest is, itself, a
60"poiitics in Literature," p. 84.
**^-"Reason and Some of Its Consequences," p. 119.
**2In Studies in English (Austin, Texas, 1945).
Landa's theses are dependent chiefly upon an analysis of
Swift's "Trinity Sermon."
214
higher form of reason (p. 252); and (3) Swift's combatting
of the deists and his general anti-rationalism (p. 248).
Landa finds the key to much of Swift's religious thinking
in his statement to Dr. Delany that "'the grand points of
Christianity ought to be taken as infallible revelations'"
(p. 256).
Landa continues his defense of Swift in his English
go
Institute Essay. Here, he finds it difficult to believe
that
. . . a contemporary could fail to see the affinity
between the Fourth Voyage--or the whole of Gulliver
--and many of the conventional sermons on human
nature and the evils of this life, . . .
and proposes that "it is by indirection a defense of the
doctrine of redemption and man's need of grace" (p. 32).
Landa concludes:
Swift sensed the danger to orthodox Christianity
from an ethical system or any view of human nature
stressing man’s goodness or strongly asserting man's
capacity for virtue. He had no faith in the exist
ence of the benevolent man of Shaftesbury and the
(New York, 1947). Landa observes that "only an
occasional commentator has recognized and stressed the
essential Christian philosophy of the Fourth Voyage" and
cites Swift* 8 relative Deane Swift and John Wesley, who
quoted liberally from Book IV in his treatise on The Doc
trine of Original Sin (1756).
215
anti-Hobbists, the proud, magnanimous man of the
Stoics, or the rational man of the deists. (p. 35)
Bernard Acworth, perhaps the most religiously con
cerned of all of Swift * 8 modem criticB, subscribes to a
similar, but more negatively expressed view.^ He believes
that all of Swift's writings are
. . . applications in the vulgar tongue of what is
to be found in the text of the Scripture . . . even
in his coarsest allusions, which, horrid as they
sound, make vice revolting and virtue, by contrast,
attractive, (p. 123)
However, Acworth is bothered by Swift's concentration in
Gulliver
. . . on the corruption of fallen Humanity instead
of on its Salvation by the only means available,
and which it should have been his supreme aim as a
Clergyman to proclaim. (p. 162)
To Acworth, Swift lacks a completely Christian perspective
because of
. . . his belief that mankind could be redeemed by
human reason and satire, if sufficiently, force
fully, and courageously applied by himself. (p.
209)
In general, the defenses before 1950 of Swift's
religious views are based upon his Christian pessimism,
his theologically oriented sense of man's sinful nature.
^^Swift (London, 1947).
216
Two critics of the fifties, who continue in this tradition,
are Colin Horne and Roland Frye. Home says of Swift's
religious position:
He was above all a Christian, a humanist, and a
moralist, . . . [who] unflinchingly accepted typi
cally Christian pessimism, with its awareness of
evil warring on the good . . . [though] he placed
it on the rational basis of a conflict between
reason and passion, as others like Milton had done
before him.°5
Roland M. Frye, also working in the area of Swift the
Christian pessimist stakes out a specific area of concern:
to explore the relation between one of his [Swift's]
imaginative creations, the Yahoo, and the traditional
view of human nature, which is known as Christian
anthropology.
Establishing that the satiric picture of the Yahoo is part
of Swift's reaction to the growing faith in man's natural
goodness, Frye seeks to discover the traditional Christian
fr^Swift on His Age (London, 1953), p. 15. Horne
confuses the issue somewhat by relating Swift also to neo-
Stoicism with its belief that "Passion should never prevail
over Reason" (p. 17).
66"swift's Yahoos and the Christian Symbols for Sin,"
Journal of the History of Ideas. XV (April 1954), 202. Frye
cites Wedel's treatment of the decline in popularity of
the conception of original sin in Swift's day, the notation
of Deane Swift and John Hawkesworth that the fourth book
was conceived in Christian terms, and Wesley's quotations
from Book IV to describe man's depravity (pp. 202-204).
217
symbolism used in the description of sin and its specific
relation to Swift's picture of the Yahoos. In the tradi
tional opposition of "spirit and flesh," the "flesh" repre
sents "Man* 8 natural propensity towards evil," and the
Yahoo is thus man "in the flesh" (pp. 204-206). The Yahoo
also embodies "many of those elements of filth and deform
ity, which are emblematic of sin throughout the Scriptures"
(p. 2 1 0 ), and which appear in many contemporary sermons.
Frye presents a number of examples from both Scripture and
sermons, including uses of "noisome or stinking smell" and
excrement (pp. 210-214), and asserts that the tradition,
which employed filth and deformity as symbolic of sin "was,
part and parcel, of the intellectual climate in and before
Swift's time" (p. 215).
The decade 1950 to 1960, however, witnessed a defense
of Swift's use of religion in more positive terms than the
fall and sinfulness of man. In 1951, Kathleen Williams
announced a view, which she elaborated in 1958, in her
Jonathan Swift and the Age of Compromise. She stated:
In Gulliver's Travels there is not only a traditional
Christian pessimism; there may well be a positive
Christian ideal suggested in the conduct of good
humans, though it is presented with Swift's habitual
obliquity.67
Among the Houyhnhnms, only the "sorrel nag" shows signs of
kindness, compassion, or self-sacrifice, but she is obvi
ously an atypical Houyhnhnm, lacking the complete dedica
tion of her fellows to "equal benevolence, detachment, and
purely rational respect for virtue" (p. 282). Swift also
makes clear the admirable qualities of the Portuguese
sailors and "emphasizes in them the very qualities, which
the Houyhnhnms neither possess nor would understand" (p.
283). Williams believes (1) that the
Houyhnhnms may indeed be compared with the passion
less Stoics of the Sermon Upon the Excellency of
Christianity, who are contrasted with the Christian
ideal of positive charity, . . . (p. 284)
(2) that Gulliver
. . . shows the loss of hope, proportion, and even
common humanity in a man who tries to limit the com
plex nature of man to "Reason alonej" (p. 284)
and (3) that more or less positive ideals appear in the
King of Brobdingnag and in Don Pedro, who "is guided by
'Honour and Conscience'" (p. 284). Conscience, Miss
^"Gulliver's Voyage to the Houyhnhnms," English
Literary History. XVIII (December 1951), 286.
219
Williams asserts, is to Swift
not a natural sense of right and wrong, or Shaftes
bury's "aesthetic perception of the harmony of the
universe," but a faculty which must itself be guided,
by the divine laws which we can know only from a
source outside ourselves, from revelation. . . .
For him as for so many Churchmen concerned with the
controversies of the period, Reason is an insuffi
cient guide without Revelation. (p. 285)
In 1958, Miss Williams reiterates her stand. She
points out the manner in which, in Book IV, utter chaos
(Yahooism) and absolute order (Houyhnhnism) are juxtaposed,
and suggests that Swift intends the reader to recognize
that "if we cannot escape from confusion to a world of
clarity and simplicity" (Houyhnhnms), neither need we "be
overwhelmed in the meaningless" (Gulliver)The exact
course to be followed is not and cannot be presented, for
**®She refers to the sermons "with their systematic
attack on the supposed sufficiency of the moral sense, the
scheme of virtue without religion" for statements of the
positive aspects of the theme of the Fourth Voyage, and she
concludes: "While allowing a place for the passions and
affections, and their possibility, under guidance for
good, Swift does not fall into the Tillotsonian position
that human nature's 'mild and merciful' inclinations and
the maternal and other natural affections are more impor
tant than revealed religion . . . Both affections and
reasons have their place in the well-regulated man, but
they are to be subject to the laws of God" (p. 285).
^ Jonathan Swift and the Age of Compromise (Lawrence,
Kansas, 1958), p. 205.
220
it is, Miss Williams contends, part of Swift's purpose to
suggest that readymade answers do not exist. Yet, while
each man must wrestle for himself with the alternatives,
the guidance of religion is, she suggests, present by im
plication:
If "Reason alone" is not a sufficient guide for man,
seen as a creature of mixed nature: if the good human
beings are examples of a particular kind of virtue,
which is not to be defined in purely rational terms:
then Swift's position is opposed to Deism and neo-
Stoicism, and this would in itself suggest, even
without the Biblical associations which surround the
Yahoos, that definition of man's nature which Chris
tian tradition has handed down . . . it is only in
the Christian positive that the contradictions in
man can be reconciled, his strength and weakness,
his reason and passion, so that the whole of his
nature, even his self-love, can be turned to affection
and an active desire for the good of others. Anything
simpler than this, any neater system, can only be
obtained by omission. (pp. 206, 208)
Thus, in 1958, Miss Williams disagrees with Wedel and
clearly aligns Swift with Pascal's belief that, as she
phrases it,
any one-sided account of the nature of man, any
scheme that denies the paradoxical reality in favor
of simplicity, will lead to disastrous practical
results, to pride, despair, or cynicism. (p. 208)
Christianity is, again, the middle way to which Swift is
dedicated.
Ernest Tuveson, writing in 1953, agrees with Williams
221
that Swift is more than simply a Christian pessimist.He
is a traditional conservative Anglican, believing in the
positive, as well as negative, aspects of Article IX con
cerning "Original or Birth Sin" (p. 370). Article IX
recognizes that, while man has a rational faculty, he also
has "a mysterious dynamic spirit of perversity" explained
by the fall and remedied only by Christian salvation, but
it rejects the extreme of total depravity and implies the
possibility of free will (p. 370). There is something of
the Yahoo in even the best of men, and the complete trans
formation of human nature is a miracle, which will occur
only at the culmination of history. In the meantime,
Tuveson finds hints in Gulliver that fallen man may attain
a height, which unfallen beings (Houyhnhnms) cannot, and
that man is never far from redemption.^ In concluding his
"Swift and the World Makers," Journal of the His
tory of Ideas. XI (January 1950), 368-375. Tuveson also
underscores Swift's "vehement insistence on the unreality
of the fall," against the background of the Deistic revival
on the secular level of the Pelagian heresy that "human
nature is the same now as in the beginning, that corrup
tions are those of society rather than of the soul, and
that the good and even perfect life is always possible if
men will only do their best" (pp. 370-371).
^The kindness of the European sailors, the virtue
and wisdom of the Brobdingnagian King, and the love and
pity of little Glumdalclitch, all contrast favorably with
the rational coldness of the Houyhnhnms.
222
presentation of Swift's incorporation of a Christian per
spective in Gulliver. Tuveson states the matter more
fully:
In the light of Christian doctrine, we can understand
the subtle relationship of the Yahoo to the civilized
man--a point on which Gulliver falls into great con
fusion. ' 2 xhe truth is that the man of good will is
both redeemed and a son of Adam . . . In terms of
Swift's symbolism, the best of man can never entirely
transcend the Yahoo nature, and pride can reach no
higher point than to fancy that anyone has done so.
Yet the regeneration is a fact, too: and in this
paradox lies the secret of revelation, which mere
observation, however acute, can never discover. We
see, then, that there can be no pattern of human per
fection against which defects are set. Nor is there
any permanent pattern of perfection among civiliza
tions. The culminating irony of Gulliver is that
when we finally arrive in a utopia, we find it is
the land of another species. (p. 375)
Obviously, Tuveson objects to those who would regard
Swift as a classical moralist, idealizing Stoical Houyhn
hnms and possessing only a tincture of Christianity. He
^ G u l l i v e r ' s confusion regarding the Houyhnhnms is
equally great and Tuveson casts a new light on the relation
of those creatures to the history of ideas in his discus
sion of it. He finds that one of the most urgent religious
problems of Swift's times was the question of the salvation
of rational beings who might exist in the newly discovered
distant planets as well as in remote places on the earth.
Henry More has suggested in Divine Dialogues (1668) that
there might be beings, endowed with reason, who had never
experienced the fall and hence would not be in need of the
religion by vAiich the sons of Adam are saved (p. 369).
223
objects equally to those who find any suggestion of primi
tivism in Swift' 8 presentation of Houyhnhnm or Yahoo (p.
372), With Tuveson, as with Williams, Swift emerges as the
moderate Anglican Christian.
The waters of criticism remained calm during the
Christianization of Gulliver by Home, Frye, the early
Williams, and Tuveson, but vrtien in 1957-58 Irvin Ehrenpreis
stated his two basic assumptions regarding Houyhnhnmland,
critical attacks began. Ehrenpreis' two suppositions were
s imply
. . . that although the houyhnhnms fsic] embody
traits which Swift admired, they do not represent
his moral ideal for mankind . . . [and] that the
houyhnhnms combine deistic and stoic views of human
nature--views against which, as a devout Anglican,
he fought.73
In the benevolence of the Houyhnhnms, Ehrenpreis found a
parody of such representatives of Deism as the Earl of
Shaftesbury, and he asserted that while Swift
. . . wished men to be as rational as possible; he
believed that religion helps them to become so, and
that reason leads them toward revelation. But the
deistic effort to build a rational system of morals
outside revelation, he regarded as evil and absurd.
(P. 103)
7a
The Personality of Jonathan Swift (Cambridge, Mass.,
1958), p. 99.
224
Quintana, Sherbum, and Landa all challenged Ehren
preis' views. Quintana recapitulates Ehrenpreis' support
of his position--first, that the Houyhnhnm maxim, "Reason
alone is sufficient to govern a rational creature," is
contrary to the spirit of Christianity and to Anglicanism;
and, second, that Swift devoted two of his sermons to the
annihilation of such a doctrine. Quintana then objects
that the Houyhnhnm maxim is hardly sufficient proof and
that the two sermons offered by Ehrenpreis as '"the best
of all commentaries on Houyhnhnmland'" are "no such com
mentaries at all" (p. 355). One has "nothing in common
with the satirical situation in Gulliver"; the other "is
concerned with the grounds of belief, not with the ration-
..74
ale of ethical conduct. Quintana concludes categori
cally:
In Part IV Swift was not expounding the grounds of
Christian belief; he was writing a great satire, the
chief theme of which is the moral dualism of man,
a being not rationale, only rationis capax. (p.
355)
It is not
Philological Quarterly. XXVII (July 1958), 355.
The two sermons were "Upon the Excellency of Christianity"
and "On the Testimony of Conscience."
a grave message to the affect, as E. [sic] would
have it, "that anyone who believes in the adequacy
of reason without Christianity must see himself as
a Houyhnhnm and the rest of mankind as Y a h o o s ."^5
George Sherburn thinks Ehrenpreis ’ ’ the first to sug
gest the impossible notion that, in the Houyhnhnms, Swift
is satirizing deism. Sherburn himself finds
. . . no clear glimmer of religion in Gulliver's
fourth voyage that would indicate any attitude
toward revealed Christianity, whether favorable or
unfavorable. (p. 93)
Gulliver's remark that "Reason alone is sufficient to gov
ern a rational creature," is, Sherburn asserts, "a common
place accepted by Anglicans and deists and even by athe
ists from ancient times down," which "simply places reason
in a hierarchy above the emotions or 'inferior mind'" and
is opposed to government by "passion and interest" (p. 94).
The remark is not in any sense being juxtaposed to
^Quintana's general appraisal of Swift’s religious
position as set forth in the 1955 Swift; An Introduction
establishes Swift's unreserved acceptance of "the doctrine
of the middle way" of Restoration Anglicanism, with its
distaste for Dissenters and for religious enthusiasm and
its belief in faith grounded in reason. The latter con
stituted its chief quarrel with the deists, who exhalted
reason to the exclusion of faith (pp. 34-35).
76uErrors concerning the Houyhnhnms," Modern Philol
ogy. LVI (November 1958), 92. Sherburn is himself in error
on this point, as may be seen in earlier portions of this
section.
226
revelation. Moreover, Sherburn does not find the Houyhnhnms
creatures without emotion, for they hate the Yahoos and
show care and affection for their children.^ Nor does
Sherburn believe that Swift's sermons throw much, if any,
light on the Fourth Voyage (p. 95).
Sherburn's final argument, his rejection of any
dichotomy between the views of Gulliver and Swift, shows
his complete lack of sympathy with the interpretation of
Ehrenpreis and the general drift of criticism in the fif
ties :
Gulliver at times, suspended as he is between what
man in this life can never be and what man in this
life is all too prone to become, certainly speaks
for Swift in the passages satirical of political,
social, and moral corruption. One notes that it is
only through conversations with his critical Hou
yhnhnm master that Gulliver comes to see in part the
baseness of life in what had been his own dear
country. His judgement in these matters is excel
lent from Swift's point of view: are we then pre
pared suddenly to imagine him a fool, praising
highly "rational" creatures who are obnoxious to
Swift? (p. 96)
Sherburn here indulges in a juggling with the
words care vs. fondness in Gulliver's remark concerning
the Houyhnhnms: "'They have no fondness for their colts or
foals; but the care they take in educating them proceedeth
entirely from the dictates of reason. And 1 observed my
master to show the same affection to his neighbour's issue
that he had for his own'" (p. 94).
227
To Sherburn, Gulliver simply joins the roster of the vic
tims of fatal contacts with perfection.Yet, in his
conclusion, Sherburn wavers slightly in his condemnation
of the view of Ehrenpreis:
Gulliver's final state is not surprising, for Swift
had low views of man's potentialities. One may
faintly suppose that he thought the socially dislo
cating effect of Houyhnhnm ideals on Gulliver
(Everyman?) no more extreme than would be the dis
locating effects of a complete, rigid, and quite
unknown obedience to Christian ideals in an eigh
teenth-century world. But such an idea seems hardly
in Swift's character.79
Louis Landa's reaction to Ehrenpreis' deistic inter
f i r )
pretation of the Houyhnhnms is equally negative. w It is
an interpretation, which he hopes Ehrenpreis "will either
7ft
Sherburn cites the experience of Paul on the Road
to Damascus, and such mythological experiences as those of
Aeneas and Semele (p. 97).
^Richard J. Dircks in "Gulliver's Tragic Rational
ism" agrees with Sherburn that it is unlikely that the
Houyhnhnms are suggestive of a "'deistic view of human
nature,"' but he does believe that "the concept of the
Houyhnhnms as representative of eighteenth century ration
alism is at the heart of the contention of Irvin Ehrenpreis"
and that "a careful examination of the fourth book of
Gulliver's Travels and an attempt to explore further the
society of horses, not as a utopian society, but as an
ironical portrait of the life of reason carried to excess,
may offer an interesting approach to a better comprehension
of Swift's ideas" (p. 135).
SQfhilological Quarterly. XXVIII (July 1959), 352.
228
modify or retract" (p. 352). Landa's objections are two
fold. He believes that Efcrenpreis has fallen into the
"semantic trap" of identifying "the language of rationalism
with the substance of deism" and that Ehrenpreis has mis
applied "the logic and conclusions of the sermons" he cites
(p. 352). The sermons involve complex doctrinal and ethi
cal traditions in the context of a divine scheme of things;
whereas, Gulliver deals with the more limited issues of
man's private and public virtues and "an appraisal of him
as a mundane domestic, political, and social creature" (p.
352). All of which appears to say, as did Quintana and
Sherburn, that Gulliver does not involve religion. While
the objections of Quintana and Sherburn do not seem out of
keeping with their previous pronouncements, the attitude of
Landa appears to be almost a complete reversal of his
position in 1946 when, as is recorded above (pp. 213-214), he
remarked upon the affinity between Gulliver and contempo
rary sermons and suggested that the Fourth Voyage migjit be
considered by "indirection a defense of the doctrine of
redemption and man's need of grace." The only explanation
seems to be that in 1946 he was concerned with the depraved
and fallen Yahoo, rather than with the Houyhnhnms, and that
he is unwilling to accept the further steps taken in the
229
fifties--the disassociation of the Yahoos and the totality
of man and the disassociation of the Houyhnhnms and a
Utopian ideal.
R. S. Crane, in a speech before the Modern Language
Association in 1955, published in 1961, extends the attack
upon Ehrenpreis to all who have dealt with the religious
implications of Book IV. He cites and rejects the "common
thesis" of "several recent studies":
that Swift conceived his characters and his story as
he did for the sake of enforcing a specifically reli
gious and Christian view of things--either negatively
by attacking current doctrines incompatible with the
dogma of original sin (this would account for the
assimilation of men to the Yahoos) or positively
also by insisting on the reality of divine grace and
the scheme of redemption (this would explain the
commonly felt limitations of the Houyhnhnms and the
presence in the narrative of the good Don P e d r o ) .81
His grounds for rejection are the lack of any correspond
ence between Swift and his friends, which in any way hinted
at such an interpretation, and the lack of any clear indi
cations within Book IV, itself, that the reader should
think as he reads it about "original sin, divine grace, the
necessity of religion, or the heresies of Shaftesbury and
Q1
"The Rationale of the Fourth Voyage." In Gulliver's
Travels: An Annotated Text with Critical Essays, ed.
Robert Greenberg (New York, 1960), p. 300.
230
the deists" (p. 301). Crane admits that when one knows who
the author was, it is possible to "find symbolic equiva
lents in the details of the story for the terms and doc
trines of whatever theological argument our hypothesis pre
supposes," but he believes that such passages "are capable
of other and usually much simpler, constructions in the
moral and psychological terms of Gulliver's own narrative"
(p. 301).
Even such an impressive array of negative opinions as
those of Quintana, Sherburn, Landa, and Crdne did not
silence the advocates of the deistic interpretation of the
Houyhnhnms. Two pro-Christian, anti-deist articles appeared
as late as 1960.
Martin Kallich in "Three Ways of Looking at a Horse:
Jonathan Swift's 'Voyage to the Houyhnhnms Again'"82 con
trasts what he believes to be (1 ) "the attitude of the
average reader immersed in Western culture toward the cul
ture of the Houyhnhnms," (2) the attitude of Gulliver, and
(3) the attitude of Swift. The average reader would be
likely to see Yahoo society as anarchistic and perversely
disagreeable though vigorous, and Houyhnhnm society as
8 2 Criticism, II (Spring 1960).
231
undynamic, economically and technically backward, dull and
unimaginative, lacking in such values as progress, freedom,
and political equality. Gulliver obviously admired the
rational sanity, simplicity, and serenity of an agricul
tural way of life, which embodied order and stability. The
Houyhnhnms were "angelic creatures, if a trifle cold and
emotionless" (pp. 107-111). Swift, Kallich believes,
rejected the life of reason because "his religion set up an
ideal of reason supplemented by faith," and the horses lack
faith (p. 112). Indeed, Swift
. . . would have detected more than a faint resem
blance between their religious views and practices
and those of the deists, and he would have inferred
that the coincidence of belief on four crucial
points is so uncanny as to be certainly more than
accidental. '8 3
The four areas common to deist and Houyhnhnm are
belief in the rational nature of religion (the sufficiency
of natural reason), belief in a religion of morals (intel
lectual assent to a group of logical propositions with no
special emphasis on the Bible as the ground of morality),
the neglect of any belief in or worship of Christ or his
A3
Page 113. Kallich refers to the Ehrenpreis-Sher-
burn exchange and accepts the arguments of Ehrenpreis
rather than those of Sherburn.
232
symbolic equivalent, and, finally, a tendency toward anti-
clericalism (forms being discredited by their absence)
(pp. 115-122). Thus, to Kallich, Swift's Houyhnhnms are
not symbols of the "perfectly sublime and divinely balanced
man-in-the-spirit," but of "the very earthly man-without-
spirit-or-faith," in short, the deist (p. 123). That
generations of critics have failed to detect this meaning
is based, Kallich claims, not so much on the "insensitivity
of simple-minded readers" as on the "exaggerated delicacy
and complexity of an over-elaborated irony" (p. 23).
Calhoun Winston's "Conversion on the Road to Houyhn
hnm" opens with a succinct statement of his proposition:
Gulliver's Travels is a satiric presentation of what
Swift regarded as the new "enlightened" religion
(often referred to loosely then and now as "deism")
and a defense couched in Swiftian irony, of Augus-
tinian Christianity. Gulliver becomes, in this
reading, a pilgrim symbol in the way Bunyan's trav
eler is symbolic (and I think the parallel with A
Pilgrim's Progress is intentional though I cannot
prove it), a sort of eighteenth-century English
Everyman whose pilgrimage from a position of com
plete religious ignorance culminates with "conver
sion," in the full sense of the word, to the faith
of the Houyhnhnms, the reasonable faith of the hyper-
reasonable horses in the Houyhnhnms* new Eden.84
^ Sewanee Review. LXVI1I (Winter 1960), 21. In trac
ing the course of Gulliver's pilgrimage, Winston under
scores the parallel with Eden, the Houyhnhnms being
"examplars of what Swift might call deist rectitude in a
233
In this interpretation, Winston assumes two propositions,
as already proved: "that Swift was a practicing believer
in institutional Christianity" and "that Gulliver is not
Swift" (p. 21). He also sees a pattern in Swift's reli
gious concern moving from his battle against sectarian con
troversy in Tale of a Tub to a battle against religious
apathy, which eventuated in Gulliver. In Winston's view,
as in that of a number of critics previously cited in this
dissertation, this nominal Christianity was caused by the
changing views of the nature of man associated with the
impact of the new scientific movement in Western thought.®^
Winston gives a multiple answer to the charge that if
Swift had intended such a religious allegory, surely he
would have given more signposts of his meaning. The veiled
deist Garden of Eden" and the Yahoos appearing two "'to
gether upon a Mountain; whether produced by the Heat of
the Sun upon corrupted Mud and Slime, or from the Ooze and
Froth of the Sea, was never known'" being reminiscent of
"not only the Judaeo-Christian account, but also of a
classical creation myth, the Deucalion and Pyrrha story
(p. 29). Winston also finds the converted Gulliver's tak
ing leave of his Houyhnhnm master "a ludicrously comic
parody of the Catholic Christian kissing the ring of a
bishop or pope" (p. 30).
Pages 22-23. Winston cites the usual advocates of
"Benevolism"--Toland and Woolaston, the Cambridge Plato-
nists, and Shaftesbury.
234
nature of the allegory was a matter of literary tact, of
Swift's love of a hoax, of a literary audience to which
Swift's views were decreasingly acceptable, and, finally,
of Swift's realization of "the potency of art" (p. 33).
However, Charles Peake, also writing in 1960, agrees
with Sherburn, in opposing the contentions of Ehrenpreis
and Williams,
that the Houyhnhnms are to be viewed ironically and
that their dependence on reason was connected by
Swift with the Deists.86
Peake reasons that
For all the ingenuity with which both critics main
tain this interpretation, X cannot help feeling
that it credits Swift with excessive subtlety at
the expense of presenting him as a less effective
satirist. Swift wrote "to the Vulgar, more than
to the Learned" and there need to be very good
reasons for supposing that he concealed his satir
ical point not only from the Vulgar but also from
the Learned for more than two centuries. (p. 180)
Peake's own interpretation is that the Yahoo "is the incar
nation of Ideal Absence of Reason as the Houyhnhnm is the
incarnation of Ideal Reason" (p. 179). Both are presented,
not as unideal or ideal ways of life to be avoided or emu
lated, but as imaginative "points of view from which human
®^"Swift and the Passions," Modern Language Review.
LV (April 1960), 180.
235
behaviors and human society can be profitably examined"
(p. 177). Their function is imaginative and aesthetic,
rather than didactic.
While there is obvious disagreement concerning the
Christian interpretation of Gulliver, a pattern of develop
ment does emerge in the criticism in this area. Those who
have accused Swift of irreligion or have been dissatisfied
with his religious attitude tend to be literalists. They
identify Swift's views with those of Gulliver, and they
miss both Swift's satiric disenchantment with the civiliza
tions he describes and his symbolic, rather than literal,
intent in the treatment of the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms.
It is only with the advent of the more sophisticated pre
sumptions that Swift and Gulliver are not identical, and
that the Houyhnhnms are not necessarily Swift's ideal nor
the Yahoos his only description of man, that a basis for
the advocates of Swift's Christian perspective is really
established. With the demolition of the view of Swift as
an idolator of reason and rationalism, it becomes diffi
cult to accept the coldly rational Houyhnhnms as anything
but one of the many extremes against which Swift inveighs.
Whether they are deists, as Ehrenpreis insists, or Cam
bridge Platonists, as McKenzie unwittingly implies, is,
236
perhaps, not the central issue. More important is the
obvious critical recognition that Swift confronts Gulliver
and the reader with the paradoxical nature, both of man and
of the alternatives which he faces. The realization that
these are also Christian paradoxes and that Swift was an
Anglican Dean in an era of religious controversy, has led
to the rather natural conclusion that there may well have
been theological implications in Swift's work. Those who,
like Crane and Peake, have reacted negatively to attempts
to delineate these implications, and have sought to estab
lish purely aesthetic interpretations, have been guilty of
not recognizing the need to read Swift on numerous levels.
They are, however, effective bridges between the concerns
of the critic of Gulliver working with the history of ideas
and the critic to be dealt with in the next chapter, who is
primarily concerned with aesthetic analyses and estimates.
The general contributions of the critic in the his
tory of ideas have been of great significance. They have
agreed upon Swift's political tenets and have elucidated
much of the political intent and meaning in Gulliver; they
have established his conservative view and his use of the
science of his time; they have substantiated the balanced
237
hopefulness of his view of man in opposition to the charges
of gross misanthropism; they have demolished the view of
Swift, the idolator of reason and rationalism; and they
have opened new vistas with lively debate over the possi
bility that Gulliver may be interpreted as Christian doc
trine.
CHAPTER V
GULLIVER AND AESTHETIC CRITICISM
From the eighteenth to the twentieth century, Gulli
ver was the object of some degree of aesthetic criticism—
of concern for style, technical strategy, characterization,
and artistic effect. It was not, however, until the
twentieth century that critics produced formal rhetorical
studies in a conscious effort to rescue Gulliver from the
biographical and didactic approaches. Some of these
rhetorical studies were part of the formalist literary
approach of the New Criticism, fashionable in the forties
and early fifties; others were personal reactions against
the excesses of the psychological and sociological criti
cism popular in the twenties and thirties. The most sig
nificant conclusions reached by the twentieth century
aesthetic critics were their insistence upon (1) the separ
ation of the views of Gulliver and Swift, (2) the essential
unity of Gulliver, including Book III, and (3) the
238
239
possibility that Gulliver is comic, rather than tragic.
The specific contributions of these critics will be grouped
under the following headings: (1) clear style and realistic
method, (2) satire, allegory, and irony, (3) role of Gulli
ver, (4) problems of unity, and (5) Gulliver as tragedy or
comedy.
The Clear Style and the Realistic Method
At the turn of the century, it was a commonplace of
criticism to comment upon Swift's clarity and precision of
expression in Gulliver. Craik voices the general opinion:
By some of the most competent of critics, his prose
has been held to be the perfection of English style;
not certainly because of its finish or elaboration;
not because it is without inaccuracy and minor in
correctness; but because it is so absolutely clear
and direct, and moves with such perfection of unstud
ied and inimitable ease.l
Temple Scott speaks of Swift's "clear, keen, nervous,
and exact" style, which "delights in the most homely Saxon,
in the simplest and most unadorned sentences," and quotes
Emerson's observation, "’He describes his characters as if
for the police-court.Such tributes do not die out in
^Selections from the Works of Jonathan Swift (Oxford,
1893), II, 35.
^Gulliver's Travels (London, 1899), I, lxxv-lvi.
240
criticism, though they sometimes are used as an explanation
of continued popularity^ or are, themselves, explained in
terms of Swift's hatred of zeal and enthusiasm and his love
of order, decorum, and restraint. The special contribu
tion, of the twentieth century to the criticism of Gulli
ver's simple, direct style and realistic effect, however,
is in a detailed comparison between Swift and Defoe.
Many critics have remarked upon the similarity
between the techniques of Swift and Defoe. Among those in
the twentieth century are Whibley, Squire, Winchester, and
Baker.^ All have agreed upon Swift's more deft management
of both clarity and realism. But, it was not until 1941
that any critic really analyzed the distinctive qualities
^Hillaire Belloc, "On Jonathan Swift." In A Conver
sation with a Cat and Others (London, 1931), pp. 138-
139.
^H. 0. White, "The Art of Swift," Hermathena. LXIX
(1947), 7-8.
^Charles Whibley, Jonathan Swift (Cambridge, England,
1917), p. 87; J. C. Square, "Utopian Satirist." In Life
and Letters (London, 1921), p. 129; Caleb Winchester,
*'Life of Jonathan Swift." In An Old Castle and Other
Essays (New York, 1922), p. 227; Ernest A. Baker, The
History of the English Novel (London, 1930), III, 238-241.
241
of the two.** In introducing his analysis in 1941, John F.
Ross pointed out the falsity of two assumptions concerning
Swift's style: "the unconscious impulse to impute to Swift
the simplicity of Lemuel Gulliver" and the tendency to
believe that, even though Swift's style contains the com
plexities of irony and satire, it can somehow be considered
apart from irony and satire (pp. 79-80). However, in the
course of his analysis, Ross does separate sentence style
and use of circumstantial detail. In the former, Defoe is
found to be "direct, oral, immediate"; whereas, Swift is
"premeditated and composed" (p. 90). Defoe's sentences
tend to be "loose, ungrammatical, and emphatic," with
jerky, rapid rhythms--the sort of sentence Walter de la
Mare called '"a kind of copious breathless gossiping'"
(Ross, pp. 90-91). Swift's sentences are periodic, rather
than loose, and his rhythms are varied, usually with a
sustained, slow, and complex movement. Ross found that the
basic differences between Swift and Defoe in the use of
circumstantial details reflect differences between their
objectives--the verisimilitude of the impossible and the
verisimilitude of the possible:
^Swift and Defoe (Berkeley, 1941), pp. 79-108.
242
Defoe's details are factual and Swift's fictional;
Defoe'8 details show a large concern with subjective
and emotional states in Crusoe, whereas Swift, for
the most part, restricts Gulliver to the objective
and unemotional; Defoe's details are unselective and
unemphatic, Swift's selective and emphatic. Further
more, with reference still only to the narrative
vehicle, Swift's details perform a complex function
whereas Defoe's perform a simple one. Narratively,
then, Swift's individual details do more work than
Defoe's.'
These differences find a counterpart in their differences
in word usage. Defoe's tautology and redundancy tend to
obscure sharp and precise meanings (p. 106); whereas,
Swift's concrete brevity has a shot gun efficiency (p.
107). And, finally, there is a difference in the emotional
content of the two styles. Defoe's style conveys "emo
tional shallowness"; Swift's "has the effect of being sur
charged with intense emotion" and, as Ross points out,
the face values of his prosaic manner have for many
of his critics, obscured the poetic complexities
and concentration of his actual achievement.®
Page 101. H. 0. White in "The Art of Swift," p. 7,
draws somewhat similar conclusions: "Defoe heaps it
[detail] up to make a perfectly normal narrative vivid,
Swift to make the impossible world of Gulliver realistic.
The circumstances are rational, but the conclusions we are
forced to draw from them are crazy. It is a rational
writer's substitute for the supernatural."
®Page 108. Walter Watkins, Perilous Balance (Prince
ton, 1939), p. 7, makes a similar observation: "The most
remarkable thing about his prose is that he uses words like
243
The particulars of Ross's analysis are not as signifi
cant in the history of criticism of Gulliver as the fact
that he made such a detailed analysis. Stylistic criticism
of the eighteenth and nineteenth century had been content
to observe. Twentieth century criticism went on to minute
analysis and, in the process, recognized the poetic values
o
of the plain style.
a poet; and like a poet, he achieves at his best an
astounding compression and intensity of feeling, partly
owing to his creative use, the poet's power to make old
familiar words say new things or to revitalize them so
that they acquire freshness of meaning. His language is
never faded or dead."
^In Eighteenth Century English Literature: Modern
Essays in Criticism, ed. James L. Clifford (New York,
1959), pp. 84-101, a final word related to the plain
style was added by Herbert Davis in his article on "The
Conciseness of Swift." Davis finds it not quite the style
described by Ben Johnson as that "'which expresseth not
enough, but leaves somewhat to be understood,'" though
that is characteristic of Swift's style. Rather, it is
a style "rigorously and exclusively concerned with making
a point" (p. 87). It is, thus, a quality of style pecu
liarly adapted to the purposes of the satirist, whose task
is to attack with weapons, both keen and sharp. Davis
points out that Swift was annoyed at the printer's tamper
ing with the text of Gulliver, less because of the omis
sions than because the passages added were in a slovenly
style. Swift, for example, seldom allowed the loose
coupling of verbs and nouns, evident in some of them (p.
97).
244
Satire. Allegory, and Irony
Swift*s use of satire, like his use of the plain
style, had often been spoken of by critics, but detailed
analysis was again reserved for the twentieth century.
However, even twentieth century criticism has not always
distinguished sharply between satire and allegory, or
between satire and irony. There is also some vagueness in
the distinctions between allegory and symbol. Yet, indi
vidual studies purport to focus upon one or another of
these areas. Perhaps, it will be well, at this point, to
recognize that most critics indulge in the unstated assump
tion that allegory and irony are merely techniques by which
satire is achieved, though they seldom distinguish clearly
between means and end.
As has been pointed out in Chapter II, particularly
in the section on political sources, much of the interest
in allegory, even in the twentieth century, was in ascer
taining allegorical equivalents of events or persons
depicted in Gulliver. However, allegory, as a literary
device, received attention quite early in the century,
when H. M. Dargan in 1916 examined "The Nature of Allegory
245
as Used by Swift."10 Dargan does not aspire to startling
originality, but rather sees his function as synthetic--
the bringing together of materials which have previously
appeared only in scattered and fragmentary form. His first
task is to distinguish satiric from nonsatiric allegory.
He suggests that satiric allegory "endeavors to degrade and
deride" rather than to exalt, as in visionary allegory,
or merely portray, as in realistic allegory. The function
of all allegorical symbols is
. . . to present the complex through the simple, the
infinite through the finite, or the abstract through
the concrete. (p. 162)
But in satire, these symbols are necessarily "on a lower
plane of intrinsic universal value than the thing symbo
lized" (p. 163), as, for instance, a frog used as a symbol
of a politician.
Dargan's analysis of the satiric allegory in Gulliver
is eclectic, depending upon hints from several nineteenth
century critics, particularly Leslie Stephen. It may,
therefore, be taken to represent the position at the open
ing of the twentieth century. In the Voyage to Lilliput,
the main allegory, according to Dargan, is "the trick of
^ Studies in Hiilology. XIII (July 1916), 159-179.
246
presenting a kingdom in miniature, with the implication
that England resembles that kingdom" (p. 172), and the
postulate of the allegory is the "symbolic circumstance or
condition of size" (p. 172). Hence, the crux of interpre
tation, both in this voyage and in the Voyage to the Brob-
dingnags is an
. . . understanding of the psychological effective
ness of physical size as an index to moral or
intellectual importance. (p. 172)
It is not, however, a simple equation of physical smallness
with moral pettiness, for the small may be characterized by
daintiness and grace, as well as moral pettiness, and the
large by grossness and repulsiveness, as well as moral
grandeur. Thus, the allegory is complicated or enriched
by ironic ambiguity or contradition. Dargan dismisses Book
III as lacking consistent and we11-developed symbolism,
and hastens on to the problems of Book IV. The essential
issue here is Swift's reversal of the natural presumption
that a beast's physical nature is more base than that of a
human. Why are Yahoos, who have the physical characteris
tics of men, less to be admired than the Houyhnhnms, with
the characteristics of horses? Dargan concludes that the
reversal is made "to support the thesis that the boasted
physical perfection of man offers no guarantee of moral and
247
rational perfection" (p. 177). This thesis, Dargan finds
developed further by a denial of
. . . the reality of the physical supremacy of man.
. . . letting the odious and contemptible material
features of the symbol stand as a representation of
internal moral decadence. (p. 177)
Since this postulate that the horses are physical paragons
and men clumsy brutes works at variance with the reader's
natural psychological prejudices, Dargan believes it less
supportable than the postulates of size in Books I and II.
Hence, Dargan*s conclusion is that
the satiric allegory adheres most closely to its
essential function when it operates by some popular
prejudice and beguiles the reader's fancy with sym
bols, which do not represent, but speciously misrep
resent, the objects for which they stand. (p. 178)
In 1920, Bernbaum agrees with Dargan that
"no other satirist so fully develops so neat a
system for exhibiting the pomposities of life
through its meanness, . . .^
and goes on to note a further symbolic-allegorical strategy
in Gulliver--the procedure of measuring
. . . man in contact with a series of allegorical
beings, more or less abstracted from the human com
plex, and finally to place him between the two ex
tremes of his own nature--the Houyhnhnm and the
Yahoo. (pp. xvii-xviii)
^ Gulliver's Travels (New York, 1920), p. xvi.
248
No extensive treatment of allegory, as a literary
device, in Gulliver appears in criticism again until the
fifties, though H. 0, White, in 1947 in "The Art of Swift,"
points out the neatness of Swift's solution of the deli
cate problem in all allegory of maintaining a balance
between the human and the abstract. As White observes,
Swift solves the whole difficulty by placing at the center
of his story the very ordinary human figure of Gulliver.
The second full critical assessment of allegory
between 1890 and 1960 appears in Ellen Leyburn's study of
"Certain Problems of Allegorical Satire in Gulliver1s
T r a v e l s published in 1950. Assuming the affinity of
allegory and satire, she seeks to establish (1) the point
in Gulliver at which Swift's allegorical intent becomes
evident, and (2) the weight of allegorical meaning, which
the story can successfully bear. She believes the use of
the story for comment on man is effectively established by
the end of the first chapter and its use for comment on
England by the end of the second, thus eliminating any sense
of artistic waste.^2 she finds its allegorical freight
^ Huntington Library Quarterly. XIII (February 1950),
168. Leyburn records Case's criticism that the applications
of allegory in the first two chapters are apparent only
249
varied from book to book. Since most of Books II and IV is
allegorical comment on the nature of man, without much
specific reference to England, the passages in Books I and
III, which carry both levels, have special force. However,
it is in the inadequate relation of these levels of alle
gorical meaning, as much as in the lack of central struc
ture, that Miss Leyburn finds Book III wanting artistical
ly. At times, in Book III, there are as many as three
levels of meaning--general satire on folly in government,
satire on the folly of speculators and scientists, and
specific satiric references--in addition to the obvious
story, and the reader becomes perplexed as to how much
extra meaning must be taken into account at any given
point.
Book IV presents a different problem in that it
appears to move from allegory to symbolism in the presenta
tion of Yahoos and Houyhnhnms.^ Miss Leyburn agrees with
after later chapters have clarified the allegorical intent,
but she feels that this is true only if one accepts Case's
politico-sociological view of allegory. She also disagrees
completely with Firth's view that the first part is simply
'"very gracious fooling'" (pp. 167-168).
13
Miss Leyburn makes the conventional distinction
that the allegorist invents a world in order to discuss the
real world; whereas, the symbolist presents the phenomena
250
Dargan that in satiric allegory there must be a suggestion
of moral equivalence between the physical qualities of the
entity described and its allegorical equivalent--as, for
example, between frog and politician. On the other hand,
the symbolic relationships in "visionary" allegory--between,
for example, an anchor and Hope--do not rest upon a moral
equivalence and are, hence, true symbols. The Yahoos are
very acceptable allegorical beings from which to derive a
sense of moral evil and degradation. The more they are
visualized and the more their physical characteristics are
thought about, the more effectively do they embody the
moral qualities, which Swift wished to convey. On the
other hand, the horses hardly represent Reason and Benevo
lence as the symbolic anchor represents Hope, yet, if one
lingers allegorically on their physical characteristics,
they become rather foolish and quite impossible as alle
gorical equivalents of the moral state of Reason and
Benevolence. Thus, the horses fail, whether conceived as
of the so-called real world in order to reveal a "higher"
or more eternal world, but her distinction between Yahoo,
as allegorical representation, and Houyhnhnm, as symbol,
appears rather strained, especially when one recalls the
cogent article by Roland Frye on "Swift's Yahoo and the
Christian Symbols for Sin" dealt with in the preceding
chapter.
251
symbols or allegorical equivalents (pp. 176-178).
Miss Leyburn, however, like White, praises Swift for
his nonallegorical treatment of Gulliver, himself. For
all his blundering, suffering, and struggling with new per
ceptions, Gulliver retains a sense of his own identity as
a human being and the reader is able to take him seriously
as a person with whose fortunes he is vitally concerned
(P. 179).
Closely related to this discussion of allegory and
symbol is Kathleen Williams' study of "Certain Aspects of
Swift's Imagery,"^ in which she calls attention to Swift's
use of animalistic and body imagery. She believes the
reader in 1954 sophisticated enough to be on guard against
literalism and
. . . aware of Swift1s frequent use of the human
body or animal body to represent, by their un-human
shape, their un-human quality as beings guided by
"reason alone." (p. 194
However, she questions the sharpness of the average read
er's awareness of the allegorical intent in much of Swift's
usage,
^ English Literary History. XXI (September 1954),
193-207.
252
because the physical so exactly and inevitably em
bodies the moral, and there is no longer any ques
tion of an arbitrary choice of allegorical figures
on Swift*s part, or of an arbitrary separation of
figure and meaning on ours. The Yahoos, with their
brutish parodies of human appearance and behaviour
do not simply represent, but are, that part of our
nature which arises from the physical; they embody
in visible shape the animal passions of man, and it
is because of this unity of expression and meaning
that they achieve such haunting conviction. (p.
194)
Even Books I and II leave the reader with the impression
that "man's intellectual and moral achievement is to some
extent dependent on his physical situation," as in the
correspondence of the Lilliputian mind and their limited
physical vision, or in the insect animal comparisons (p.
197). And, In Book III, Gulliver, rather than the reader,
forgets the vital relationship between the moral and the
physical in his assumption of the ideality of long life.
He has forgotten the physical-moral limitations, which are
the concoramitant qualities of age (p. 196).
Miss Williams concludes:
Whether in the form of single images or in the
extended symbols of the Brobdingnagians or the
Yahoos, it is in terms of the human body that Swift
communicates most powerfully with his readers,
because these are the terms in which his ideas can
be most fully explored and conveyed. (p. 207)
In such fashion does the aesthetic critic lay the
ghost of the nineteenth century's inveighing against the
253
morbid, animalistic preoccupation of the misanthropic
Swift.
The final statement on the position of allegory and
symbolism in the discussions between 1890 and 1960 seems to
be a negative one. R. S. Crane raises the following ques
tion concerning the method of Book IV: "Is it primarily an
allegorical or symbolic method, or is it not?"^ He re
jects Swift's allegorical or symbolic intent because of the
confusing lack of unanimity among the interpreters of sym
bol and allegory. Crane's positive view is that Book IV
should be taken at face value, as,
. . . a marvelous or fantastic fable, literally nar
rated, in which the Houyfanhnms and the Yahoos are
not metaphors or symbols standing for general ideas,
but two species of concrete beings, the one beyond
any known human experience, and the other all-too-
possible anywhere, whom Gulliver has been thrown with
in his travels and has come to venerate and abhor
respectively. The moral or thesis of the fable, on
this assumption, is brought home to the reader
directly through the story itself, which is essen
tially the story of how Gulliver, seeing the virtues
of the Houyhnhnms "in opposite view to human corrup
tions" and realizing the "entire congruity" between
men and the Yahoos, undergoes an extreme revolution
in his opinions and feelings about "human kind."
(P. 303)
"The Rationale of the Fourth Voyage," In Gulli
ver 's Travels: An Annotated Text with Critical Essays, ed.
Robert A. Greenberg (New York, 1961), pp. 300-307.
254
Thus, while allegory has been recognized as a liter
ary technique of importance to Gulliver, criticism in the
twentieth century has tended to discuss it, either as
satirical allegory or allegorical satire, and has been
somewhat critical of its effectiveness, both as technique
and as method of critical interpretation.
Detailed discussions of irony in Gulliver have been
more numerous in the twentieth century than those dealing
with allegory and satire, but they appeared later. None
was published before the thirties. In 1932, Eddy, in his
Introduction to Satires and Personal Writings, establishes
a general and balanced viewpoint. He asserts that the
effectiveness of Swift's satire
. . . is derived, in the last analysis, from his
mastery of the technique of his grim irony, unrolled
in pages of closely knit prose, without padding or
waste of words. ®
Defining irony as "that figure of speech in which words are
*
used to convey the opposite of their literal meaning" (pp.
xxiv-xxv), Eddy points out that it is Swift's practice "to
lash his victims with their own whip," to state his oppo
nent's case, instead of his own, seeming to accept its
^(London, 1932), p. xxvii.
255
premises for himself, but carrying them out to their logi
cal conclusions, at which point the absurdity of the orig
inal position suddenly appears (p. xxv). Eddy isolates
two other salient features of Swift's satire: his "use of
fiction as sugar-coating for a pill of bitter philosophy"
(p. xxix) and his use of wit and humour to ridicule what he
would demolish (p. xxx).
The two other analyses of the thirties--"Swift1s
Irony" (1934) by F. R. Leavis and "Swift and the Symbolism
of Irony" (1939) by G. K. Knight--are less objective. Both
maintain an uneasy alliance between biographical interest
tinged with moral stricture and aesthetic concern. Leavis
stops just this side of psychological explanation of what
he considers to be Swift's excessive negative emotionalism;
Knight ends with implications that Swift's psychological
peculiarities may explain his strong sense aversions and
negative imagery.
Leavis finds "a sense of extraordinary energy" as the
general effect of Swift's irony. But the irony, itself,
"is essentially a matter of surprise and negation; its
function is to defeat habit, to intimidate and to demoral
ize."^ This negative intensity, Leavis feels, explains the
^In Determinations (London, 1934), p. 76.
256
lifelessness of the Houyhnhnms in comparison with the
Yahoos. Swift, lacking positive intensity and beset by an
almost pathological negativism, leaves for the Yahoos all
the "instincts, emotions, and life, which complicate the
problem of cleanliness and decency" (p. 84). Leavis de
picts Swift as an author, whose creative powers are exhib
ited consistently in negation and rejection, and who pos
sesses great emotional force, but neither moral grandeur
nor great intellect.
G. K. Knight starts with the proposition that Swift's
clarity of style is misleading, for "the power of surface
18
simplicity is fed entirely from the symbolism beneath,"
a sensory-physical symbolism. Knight's description of the
manner in which Swift's innocent playing with size causes
the reader to condemn Pride is simply an extension of
Eddy's general description of Swift's technique cited above.
Knight adds, however, some interesting comparisons with the
Shakespearean tradition of using nauseating animals to
induce responses of indignity and disgust. Here, he shows
nonrational sensory elements effectively blending with
18
"Swift and the Symbolism of Irony." In The Burning
Oracle (London, 1939), p. 119.
rational response, much as Dargan did. Knight, unlike
Leyburn and Dargan, does not admire the mixed sensory reac
tions demanded in Books I and II--the introduction of posi
tive elements among the petty Lilliputians and of gross
elements among the noble Brobdingnagians. These he finds
confusing. Yet, also unlike Leyburn and Dargan, he be
lieves Swift has found "exact sensory equivalents to his
intuition in the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos."^ On the whole,
Knight finds Gulliver a work rooted in sensation. That it
lacks the "dark intensity" or "the richest negative pro
fundities" of Milton's Hell is regrettable, but in its
dependence upon sensory-symbolic strategies, which result
in judgments essentially instinctive in the reader, it
does achieve an organic sense of necessity and truth.
Knight joins Leavis, however, in criticizing the negativ
ism of Swift's sensory-symbolic strategy. Though he de
fends Swift's less savory physical impressions when they
give the reader an intentional jolt, Knight admits there
are no positives with emotional power. Swift's "concentra-
1Q
Page 121. Knight observes that the scent of
stables is traditionally nonabhorrent to man, and he also
cites recent work on horse-magic in the ancient world as
support for the sensory-symbolic appropriateness of the
horse.
258
tion on ordure” and his tendency either to ignore or to
impregnate with disgust all erotic emotions, point to
strong sense aversions, \rtiich are, Knight feels, "funda
mentally a denial of the poetic essence" (p. 129). Yet
Knight concludes that it is to Swift's credit "that he so
finely reversed that denial to poetic account" (p. 129).
A. E. Dyson, in "The Metamorphosis of Irony" (1959)
is also disturbed by the negativism of Gulliver, but his
analysis is more precise and rhetorical. Despite a bewil
dering array of disagreements upon even the most funda
mental points of interpretation of Gulliver. Dyson feels it
is possible to define "on the surface, at least," ways in
which the irony works:
At one moment he [Swift] will make outrageously
inhuman proposals, with a show of great reasonable
ness, and an affected certainty that we shall find
them acceptable; at another, he will make soundly
moral or Christian proposals, which are confidently
held up for scorn. Again, we find him offering, with
apparent sympathy and pride, an account of our actual
doings, but in the presence of a virtuous outsider,
whose horrified reactions are sufficient index of
their true worth. (p. 55)
These devices, among which Swift moves with great flexi
bility, are all part of a general technique of betrayal.
20Essays and Studies. XI (1958), 53-67.
259
As a result of this general technique, "A state of tension,
not to say war, exists between Swift and his readers"
(p. 56). The "metamorphosis" of this ironic betrayal
occurs in terms of its objects. It is, at times, directed
against things which can be morally changed. At other
times, it is deflected and turned upon states of mind,
which may or may not be altered. At still other times, it
is deflected again and turned against states of mind, or
existence, which cannot be changed at all. Thus, the irony
intended for moral satire undergoes a complete metamorpho
sis: beginning in the desire "to wonderfully mend the
world," it ends in "a savage exploration of the world's
essential unmendability" (pp. 57-58); starting as an
attempt to improve man, Gulliver ends by writing him off as
incurable.
Unlike Leavis, Dyson is unhappy and uncertain about
the negativism of his conclusion. He first suggests that
Swift may have been somewhat unconscious of betraying his
reader into despair, yet on second thought doesn't believe
this possible. He assumes that Gulliver "can work nor
mally" as a satire "only if we can accept the Houyhnhnms as
a desirable human possibility"; but adds, "this, I do not
for a moment believe Swift thought we could" (p. 65).
260
Dyson's dilemma seems to derive from his assumption that
Gulliver must "be one or the other of the extremes," that
Swift drives an intentional
. . . wedge between the intellectual and emotional,
and pushes them farther apart, as moral opposites,
than any except the most extreme Puritans have usu
ally done. (p. 65).
In short, Dyson does not entertain the possibility that
Swift created a false dilemma, which is, itself, an addi
tional irony. As a result, he concludes his analysis with
a rather ambivalent compromise,
agreeing that Gulliver ends by destroying all its
supposed positives, but deducing, from the exuber
ance of the style and the fact that it was written
at all, that Swift did not really end in Gulliver's
position. (p. 67)
He even adds rather lamely:
Very often, even at the most intense moments, we may
feel that pleasure in the intellectual destructive
ness of the wit is of more importance to him [Swift]
than the moral purpose, or the misanthropy, that is
its supposed raison d'etre. (p. 67)
Henry W. Sams, in his discussion of "Swift's Satire
21
of the Second Person," also views it as a form of
betrayal, but his interpretation is quite different:
21English Literary History. XXVI (1959), 34-44.
261
If the perfections of the Houyhnhnms are indeed per
fect, and if the people of England are indeed Yahoos,
then Swift's final counsel is a counsel of despair.
But, if the final chapter is read as betraying the
doctrine of the Houyhnhnms, the effect is somewhat
different. (p. 40)
Sams finds evidence of satiric betrayal in Gulliver's
prideful rejection of man on his return from the land of the
horses. Hence, he believes, that Swift advances the doc
trine of the Houyhnhnms, wins its acceptance, and then
betrays it, through his description of Gulliver's final
excesses (p. 41).
Ihe significance of both Dyson and Sams, in a review
of twentieth century aesthetic criticism, aside from their
analyses of particular aspects of ironic technique, is their
highlighting of the inevitable relationship between tech
nique and meaning, even in articles purporting to deal pri
marily with the aesthetic problems of irony.
With some critics, interest centered more directly
upon satire itself. John Ross (1941), as part of his
closely knit argument for the comic element in the charac
terization of Gulliver in Book IV, re-examines the tradi
tional distinction between two modes of satire: "the genial,
laughing, urbane satire of Horace, and the severe, lashing
262
22
satire of Juvenal." The first he classifies as "comic
satire"; the latter as "caustic or corrosive satire" (pp.
177-178). Swift's is largely the latter type. Admitting
that comic satire has always been the more popular of the
two genres with critics, Ross notes that those who identi
fy good satire only with comic satire are likely to have
difficulty with Book IV, perhaps even missing Swift's tri
umphant return in the final chapters to comic satire at the
expense of Gulliver. In his analysis of Gulliver, in terms
of comic and corrosive, Ross finds Books I and II largely
in the comic category, with the exception of the court's
debate on how to dispose of Gulliver in Book I (pp. 179-
180), and the long passage in which the King and Gulliver
discuss mankind in Book II. Book III is completely ig
nored , but the first nine chapters of Book IV are seen as
corrosive satire, largely unmitigated by either the comic
detail or irony, which enlivens Books I and II. But in
the final three chapters, the satiric strategy changes. As
Ross says:
What else he does in those last chapters is unique in
the history of satiric literature: the severe attack
2^"The Final Comedy of Lemuel Gulliver." In Studies
in the Comic. (Berkeley, 1941), p. 177.
263
with its apparently rational basis and its horrify*
ing conclusions continues to the end in the personal
narrative of Swift's puppet. Thus severe satire
remains the main theme, but the new theme of Gulli
ver's absurdity complicates the issue. By rising to
a larger and more comprehensive view than he permits
to Gulliver, Swift is satirically commenting on the
insufficiency of the corrosive attitude. (p. 196)
Basil Willey (1946) enlarged upon the categories of
satire offered by Ross, presenting a succinct analysis of
the classic technical devices of satire, "all of which are
employed by Swift":
The actual may be depicted in a distorted or in
verted form, so that we judge it and condemn it
first and only then recognize its essential like
ness to our own system (Lilliput). Or the actual
may be described and explained to some person who
is entirely ignorant of existing conditions, and who
can therefore stand for uncorrupted Nature and
Reason (The King of Brobdingnag). . . . Or the
satirist may prefer simply to depict a Utopia where
all is rationally ordered, and leave us to make
the required application to actuality. . . . What
ever technique the satirist uses . . . his effort is
always to strip the object satirized of the film of
familiarity which normally reconciles us to it, and
to make us see it as in itself it really is. . . .
This frustration of the "stock-response" is some
times achieved in Swift . . . by a deliberate re
fusal to see in some ignoble object which custom has
concentrated or made symbolic, any further than the
object itself.23
23
"'Nature' in Satire." In The Eighteenth Century
Background (London. 1949), pp. 104-106.
264
Willey disagrees with the presumption that Swift, as
a satirist, held no positive standards against which his
satire is pitted. Because he is not a revolutionary,
Swift's satire, Willey asserts,
refers to standards vAiich exist ready-made, and which
would become operative without need for subversive
change, if only men would not perversely depart from
them. (p. 108)
Willey finds, however, a negative reaction in Swift's
apparent abandoning of the hope of ever lessening the dis
parity between the ideal and the actual--in his total dis
sociation of Houyhnhnm and Yahoo. Mr. Willey here, of
course, is guilty of identifying Yahoo and man, and of
ignoring the more logical identification of Gulliver and
man.
Continuing the attempt to define the nature of
Swift's satire in Gulliver. Quintana (1948) described
Swift's method as "situational satire.Quintana's first
postulate is that satire, like any other form of literary
art, is essentially impersonal and that in Gulliver. as
well as in all other of his more notable prose satires,
^"Situational Satire: A Commentary on the Method of
Swift," University of Toronto Quarterly. XVII (1948),
130-136.
265
Swift himself is not present. As in a drama, "it is the
characters, who are in complete charge" (p. 130). The
essential feature of satire, as a form of rhetoric, is its
creation of a world which is, in the case of Gulliver. a
most complex structure: "It is at once a way of looking at
things, a way of feeling, and a way of speaking" (p. 132).
Quintana calls Swift's particular satiric method "situa
tional satire," because it is a more inclusive entity than
a dramatic construct, an allegory, or a parody, although
all of these devices are a part of the method. As Quintana
puts it:
With the recognition of the situation as such comes
a perception of the functional character of Swift's
favorite devices which serve both in the creation of
the situation and in the generation of the kinetic
energy by which it is sustained. (p. 133)
The devices, which Quintana explores, include parody
of the style, tone, and matter-of-fact reporting in genuine
travel books; allegory, particularly political; and myth,
including the animal myth of the fourth book, the Hobbesian
myth of man as a physical mechanism in the third book, and,
possibly, "the myth that there are no myths" (pp. 133-135).
Two later critics, who give significant attention
to Swift's satiric effects, are Irvin Ehrenpreis and
266
William Ewald.^ Ehrenpreis (1952) isolates three levels
26
of irony in a single episode in Gulliver, analyzes the
satiric device of invective,^7 describes Swift's use
of personae, with whom the unsuspecting reader tends to
indentify himself only to be forced, through ironic impli
cations, to dissociate himself (pp. 311-312).
Ewald (1954) analyzes even more completely the
2 8
rhetorical advantages of Gulliver as ironic persona. He
identifies the objects of Swift's satire as falsehood,
2^While a few others, particularly Herbert Davis,
The Satire of Jonathan Swift (New York, 1947), and Edwin
Honig, i , Notes on Satire in Swift and Jonson," New Mexico
Quarterly Review, XVIII (1948), 155-163, have written on
satire in Swift and Gulliver, they have contributed
nothing new to the development of aesthetic criticism.
26"Swift an<3 Satire," College English. XIII (March
1952), 309-310. The three levels were (1) simple irony
(writing the opposite of what one means in a tone which
indicates the real intention), (2 ) an irony about an
irony, and (3) a form "corroborating or illustrating the
preceding remark, but seeming to suggest the opposite"
(p. 310).
27
Again he distinguished three aspects: (1) name-
calling, (2 ) the fusing of many invectives by means of an
image or symbol, and (3) the expansion of an image into
myth or allegorical implications, as in the picture of the
Yahoos.
^ftrhe Masks of Jonathan Swift (Cambridge, Mass.,
1954).
267
perversion of reason, and pride, and demonstrates that
Gulliver plays a part in the exposition of each. In his
character as seaman, Gulliver affords opportunity for
subtle burlesque of the writers of travel literature (p.
128). His learning and his moral nature provide defects,
which can be used satirically (p. 130). The incongruities
between his claims to veracity and credibility and the fan
tastic nature of his adventures, his tendency to exagger
ate, and his record of deceit, add further satiric possi
bilities (pp. 132-135). Differences between the attitudes
of Gulliver and Swift also enable Swift to point up ironi
cally the events, which Gulliver witnesses, and much of the
satire in Gulliver consists of details, which Gulliver sees
(pp. 148-151). In the satire on human pride, Gulliver is
used not only as an observer but also as an active partici
pant in the events he describes, thereby multiplying the
satiric elements.
Thus, significant rhetorical contributions were
made by Ross (1941) in his comparison of the realistic
techniques of Swift and Defoe; by Dargan (1916) and Ley
burn (1950) in their analyses of Swift's use of allegory;
by Kathleen Williams (1954) in her study of Swift's
imagery; by Eddy (1932), Leavis (1934), Knight (1939), and
Dyson (1958) in their accounts of Swift's ironic strate
gies; by Ross (1941), Willey (1946), Quintana (1940),
Ehrenpreis (1952), and Ewald (1954) in their attempts to
define the nature and technique of Swift's satire. The
most elaborate rhetorical studies in the twentieth century,
however, are two volumes published in 1953: J. M. Bullitt's
Jonathan Swift and the Anatomy of Satire: A Study of
Satirical Technique and Martin Price's Swift's Rhetorical
Art. Both books are more notable for the comprehensiveness
of their treatments than for their addition of any star-
tlingly new material. Both, however, avoid the error of
thinking that sheer formal analysis separated from other
concerns is an adequate approach to the anatomy of Swift's
rhetoric. Bullitt proposes that Swift's satiric devices
"evolve organically out of his intellectual perception of
the disparity between reality and expectation that provokes
the comic spirit.Hence, he is basically concerned with
the aspects of Swift's satiric craftsmanship "which most
intimately join with and express his intellectual attitudes
and values" (p. vii). He defines Swift's satire as
^ Jonathan Swift (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), p. vii.
269
a mediator between two perceptions--the unillusioned
perception of man as he actually is, and the i-deal
perception, or vision, of man as he ought to be.3^
With Swift, Bullitt believes these are universal percep
tions, rather than perceptions limited by time and place,
and Swift's responses are multiple, rather than simple,
including laughter, lament, anger, and an occasional dream
of a remedy. These responses operate both singly and si
multaneously (pp. 4-5). The essential purpose of Swift's
satiric technique is, Bullitt states,
to stimulate an awakened and indeed a poetic aware
ness in the reader's mind--an awareness dulled by
traditional and heavy-handed moralizing--of the
vicious limitations of man. (p. 36)
The means by which Swift achieves his end include "exposure
by ridicule," invective, diminution, and irony, the last
three deriving much of their force from the devices of
satiric detachment and indirection. This is particularly
true of irony, which Bullitt relates to the "dry-mocke" of
Puttenham (p. 50) and defines as a fusion of both dissimu
lation and mockery. In his discussion of irony, Bullitt
distinguishes the use of two aspects: the "Praise-blame
3®Page 1. Bullitt rather surprisingly states that
"Gulliver and Swift identified man's actuality with the
Yahoos and the sweet reasonableness of the Houyhnhnms
remains an unattainable and desirable ideal" (p. 15).
270
Inversion" and the Ironic Mask--the persona--which makes
possible Swift's "dramatic irony" or, as Quintana has
called it, "situational satire" (pp. 55-61). Bullitt
insists, however, that despite Swift's high degree of
artistic detachment, the explosive power of his irony is
. . . the reader's recognition that Swift's seeming
detachment is the artifice of a creative mind
controlling, forming and channeling the most in
tense personal involvement.31
Bullitt finds further support for Swift’s satire in
his employment of the rhetorical device of the example.
This device appears particularly in conjunction with the
political allegory in Gulliver, in Swift's use of the log
ical processes of thought as both object and method of
satire, and in his employment of the "puppet symbol." By
means of the latter, Swift reduces the Lilliputians to the
status of automated mechanical toys and Gulliver, himself,
becomes such in B r o b d i n g n a g . ^ 2
Page 6 6 . Bullitt argues that both detachment and
irony dissolve in the presence of Gulliver's final awaken
ing and his dispairing vision of his own limitations.
Others, like Ross, see an intensification of comic irony
in Gulliver's reaction at this point.
32Pages 91-92, 122, 137-138. Walter Ong, "Swift
on the Mind: the Myth of Asepsis," Modern Language Quar
terly. XV (September 1954), 214, notes Swift's propensity
271
In conclusion, Bullitt admits that while a detailed
study of Swift's satiric techniques may suggest some levels
of complexity in his writing, it cannot explain them. The
quality, which transcends technical virtuosity may be
described only as "the pressure of an outraged conviction
subdued and controlled by a sustained artistic intention"
(p. 192). Herein, perhaps, lies the peculiar contribution
of twentieth century artistic criticism. The nineteenth
century perceived the outrage, but did not appreciate the
;degree and complication of the aesthetic control exercised
through an unprecedented exploitation of diverse and pene
trating satiric techniques.
Price's study of Swift's Rhetorical Art extends
this twentieth century appreciation perceptibly. While
Price fails to make clear whether Swift's structural pat
terns are original or adaptations of conventional rhetori
cal devices, he is concerned to establish that Swift's
methods are a proper counterpart of his convictions about
|for mechanistically conceived imagery and conceptualiza-
jtions, reducing "psychological operations and situations
!immediately into spacial or local-motion components." Ong
includes Swift's frequent preoccupation with magnification
|and shrinking as part of this same mechanist current (p.
1217).
272
the human predicament in both its timeless and temporal
aspects. It is his stated purpose
. . . to trace some of Swift's typical designs and
to see in what way they are necessary to his mean
ing. 3 3
Although Price devotes chapters to Swift's "rhetor
ical background" and his use of "the plain style and the
method of wit,"^ the considerations related to Gulliver
include only Swift's use of irony and symbolism.3^ Price's
own style is exceptionally involved and pedantic, leading
one reviewer to wonder if Swift would not have "included it
among those laborious Dissertations in Criticism and Phil
osophy’ which were the pride of Moderns and the butt of his
ridicule."JO For example, in discussing the nature of
Swift's irony, Price says:
In irony we hear two voices, one saying what its
limited character requires, the other what a differ
ent awareness must add or oppose. The quality of
the ironic effect will be determined by the relation
ship of these two voices--the extent to which they
^3(New Haven, 1953), p. vii.
■^Chapters 2 and 3.
33Chapters 4 and 5.
3^Colin J. Horne, "Swift's Rhetorical Art: Review,"
Review of English Studies. VI (April 1955), 206.
273
differ, the degree to which one complements the oth
er or simply discredits it, the range of attitudes
which can be inferred as the ground for each. The
same apparent incongruity and ultimate reconcilia
tion we find in metaphor occur here, but in irony
they occur as a meeting of levels. From another
approach irony might be regarded as condensed
antithesis, expressed not in the balance of two
terms but in the balance of two meanings simulta
neously expressed in one term. . . . In his ironic
works he [Swift] creates a series of speakers, each
of them unaware of one term of a possible antithe
sis, and all the more unguarded, because of this
obtuseness, in calling attention to vrtiat he disre
gards. . . . The use of levels of meaning in irony--
the vertical method of wit--keeps us aware of in
congruity yet allows the individual solecisms to be
woven into a fabric of consistent attitudes and
character. The effects of wit are muted by their
second function [irony]; they have now become
flashes of characterization as well. The complete
reversal, suggested throughout is suspended, as in
Gulliver's Travels, to the end. As a result the
ironically sustained solecisms grow into a complex
embodiment of a deficient moral attitude, and about
the central attitude may be clustered others that
give it density. (p. 57)
Price does, however, make a number of significant
points. In dealing with Swift's symbolism and structure,
he notes that both Gulliver and Tale of the Tub are based
largely on the creation of symbolic patterns, "in both
cases reductive patterns" in which high becomes low. He
also observes a kind of dignity in these patterns them
selves, acquired from the inclusion of so much of man's
behavior. The result is to make "man's vice and folly a
thorough and terrible inversion of his true goodness" (p.
274
75). These reductive patterns are not, however, the whole
truth:
If we have come to see the weakness of the conven
tional distinction between greatness and baseness,
we need not abandon either the words or the distinc
tion but consider both anew. . . . the impossible
choice of Gulliver between Houyhnhnm and Yahoo is
Swift's device for dissolving the reductive simplic
ity he has opposed to an uncritical complacency. A
middle view is left for the reader to define. (p.
76)
The narrative structure is not allowed to demand simple
allegorical equations, though particular allegorical mean
ings are involved from time to time. Nor are the symbols
vague and indefinite. In Price's words:
We are confronted with a new situation. Instead of
starting with generalities which acquire a weight
of suggestion through symbolic patterns, we start
almost at once with elaborate symbolic patterns
and move toward apparent simplification. (p. 76)
A central theme in Gulliver is, according to Price,
"the theme of inversion," which in Swift may be defined as
the threat of corruption (p. 77), and the whole book moves
toward a definition of roan's nature in terms of this poten
tial inversion. Actually, Price finds "the culmination of
Swift's satiric point in the reduction of man to mechanism"
(p. 81) as a means of proving that the human is not neces
sarily superior to the brute. In the process, one of the
central ironies of the book is apparent. Since pride of
275
all the vices most obviously divests man of clear self-
knowledge (his only defense against corruption), it is
right that Gulliver should attack pride. Yet, even as he
attacks it, he is its victim. As Price points out,
Gulliver, who began with a pride in man that found
him above criticism, ends [even as he is warning
men of the pitfall of pride] with a pride in pure
reason that finds man insupportable. (p. 101)
Price also points out Swift's central metaphor--the
relation of outside to inside, which pervades Gulliver,
particularly as the problem of dress, though it extends
also to manners and institutions. Dress, in this interpre
tation, is "the emblem of the human animal, the necessary
restraint placed upon the passions of the body" (p. 105).
On the whole, despite his professions, Price is less
aware than Bullitt of the impossibility of reducing the
genius of Swift to technical devices. Also, his rhetorical
analyses are not particularly original, despite his crea
tion of a battery of technical terms through which he
expresses them. His work, however, is representative of
the twentieth century preoccupation with the minutiae of
rhetoric as a possible mode of understanding Gulliver.
The contribution of twentieth century criticism in this
area was not so much the establishment of new perspectives
as in the redirection of attention from the author to the
work. Critics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
had been aware of Swift's mastery of the clear style and
of allegory, irony, and satire. They had simply not pur
sued the details of his strategies with such dogged and
scientific intensity. The irony of twentieth century ef
forts is that, while aesthetic analysis of style began as
an effort to bring some objectivity into areas where the
biography of the author and the personal impressions of the
reader had been the substrata of critical interpretation,
it did not solve the ultimate problems of interpretation
with any more unanimity than had other methods.
The Role of Gulliver
Many of the formal treatments of satire necessarily
involve some assessment of the role of Gulliver in the
pattern of his Travels. There were problems of determining
whether he and Swift spoke with the same voice, and whether
Gulliver was the attacker or the attacked in the satiric
strategy. Full consideration of these issues has, however,
been reserved for this separate section.
Although most critics have made some judgment con
cerning the function of Gulliver, John Moore, in 1928, was
Ill
37
the first expressly to analyze Gulliver's role. 7 He
established that Gulliver was neither Swift in disguise,
nor "the allegorical representative of man" postulated by
Eddy.^® Gulliver's slow, easy good nature, and his obvious
mediocrity were quite unlike the qualities of Swift, and
his obvious individuality removed him from the realm of
pale allegory. Nor was Gulliver the average, undis
tinguished, eighteenth century traveller (p. 480). Moore
suggests that all four adventures of Gulliver might be
appropriately entitled The Sophistication of Lemuel Gulli
ver (p. 472). If, during the third voyage, one detects
Swift speaking through Gulliver, it is simply proof of
Gulliver's attainment of a measure of wisdom (p. 477).
Moore describes Gulliver as the perfect guide to the
brink of misanthropism. Lacking in sharp insight, but
endowed with curiosity and extraordinary zest for experi
ence, Gulliver is "a noticeably kindly, friendly, patriotic,
perhaps, even optimistic man . . . of a nature almost
37"The Role of Gulliver," Modern Philology. XXV
(1928), 469-480.
^®Moore, p. 469; William Eddy, Gulliver's Travels:
A Critical Study (Princeton, 1923), p. 100.
278
immune to meanness, selfishness, hatred, morbidity of any
sort" (p. 475). Though he does have the "capacity slowly
and honestly to think," his "every predisposition is against
misanthropy" (p. 475). The reader of his Travels, there
fore, can rest assured that, if Gulliver becomes a misan
thrope, the race is truly hateful. Yet, Gulliver is the
man who in the end "no longer considers ways of benefiting
man, as he had, even so recently as during his visit to the
Struldbrugs," and despairs of "'reforming the Yahoo race in
this kingdom'" of England (pp. 479-480). He has, thus,
perfectly fulfilled his role of conducting the reader
gently and with conviction to "Misanthropolis" (p. 480).
Moore's dissociation of Gulliver and Swift was not
immediately emulated. Although Carl Van Doren (1930) found
39
flaws in the completeness of Swift s misanthropy, he
presented Gulliver as "almost undisguisedly Swift," par
ticularly among the Houyhnhnms (p. 38). Bertram Newman
(1937) implied a general function of Gulliver as the mouth
piece of Swift, but suggested that, particularly in the
^^Swift (New York, 1930), p. 33. Van Doren says,
"If he had been fully alien, he would not have troubled
himself to be a missionary."
279
later books, Swift thrusts him aside and speaks directly.^O
Walter Watkins (1939), in his identification of aspects of
Shakespeare and Swift, equated Swift with Gulliver by
implication, rather than explicit statement. Yet, in his
constant comparisons between Swift and Hamlet, rather than
41
Gulliver and Hamlet, the unexpressed identity is obvious.
In the forties, however, the separation of author and
protagonist is effected. Ross (1941), Horrell (1943),
Klinger (1945), and Case (1945), all speak out emphatical
ly. Ross says: "One of ray main concerns here is to show
that Gulliver, in the last voyage, is not Swift. He is,
rather, the na¥ve and absurd butt of Swift's satire, and
Swift, in commenting satirically on the insufficiency of
Gulliver's misanthropy, proves he has transcended identi
fication with Gulliver's views. Joe Horrell, in "What
Gulliver Knew," opens with severe castigation of those,
who like Watkins, Van Doren, and Eddy, involve their
readers in biography by their loose identifications of
literature and life, particularly by their tendency to
40
Jonathan Swift (London, 1937), pp. 304-305.
^ Perilous Balance (1939).
^"The Final Comedy of Lemuel Gulliver," p. 124.
regard Gulliver as autobiography.^^ Samuel Klinger is
similarly distressed about the "historical-deductive"
method, which tends to discuss Gulliver in terms of whether
or not Swift was a misanthrope, rather than asking the more
pertinent question of whether Gulliver is a misanthrope
(p. 402). Since Gulliver's misanthropism may be settled
by reference to the "novel" itself, without the interven
tion of extraneous considerations, it is, in Klinger's
view, a more appropriate question for the literary critic.
Arthur Case states, concerning the identification of Gul
liver with Swift: "No single misinterpretation of Swift's
intentions has done more to obscure the real purpose of
Gulliver's Travels. C a s e also agrees with Moore that
Gulliver is not only distinct from his creator, but also
not to be identified with any contemporary voyagers. He
is, rather, a narrative protagonist, whose character is
not static, but deepens with experience.
An additional and distinctive contribution concerning
^ Sewanee Review. LI (October 1943), 476-477. Nor is
he happy about what he regards as the related tendency to
study it exclusively as satire (p. 476).
^ Four Essays on "Gulliver's Travels." (Princeton,
1945), p. 115.
281
the role of Gulliver was made by Horrell. In an era when
criticism was reviving the artistic tenets of Henry James,
Horrell discovered in Gulliver not only a fictional pro
tagonist divorced from his creator, but also a Jamesian
"compositional center." Having chosen the form of fiction,
and having isolated the world with which he proposes to
deal within the confines of a circle, Swift, according to
Horrell, places between the reader and this self-contained
world, a reporter through whom the reader sees the inci
dents within the circle. Or, to use the Jamesian image,
Gulliver is the "window," the "limiting form" through which
the scene is viewed. Because the incidents within the
circle affect Gulliver, the circle reproduced for the reader
may suffer some distortion. This, however, may be cor
rected by a knowledge of Gulliver's character. Gulliver’s
lack of full knowledge of the meaning of the life within
the circle--the Jamesian quality of "bewilderment"--gives
the illusion of imperfect knowledge essential to the illu
sion of real life.
Two other critics, Robert Elliott (1952) and William
Ewald (1954), picked up this Jamesian analysis of the role
45'*what Gulliver Knew," pp. 478-481.
282
of Gulliver. Elliott says:
Obviously, the character Gulliver controls all the
materials in the Travels. We see only what he sees
(in James's figure, he is the window between the
consciousness of the artist and the human scene);
we experience, empathically, only what he experi
ences; we judge only on the basis of what he tells
us (our judgments may or may not agree with his).
In short, Gulliver is, once more in Jamesian terms,
the "compositional centre" of the entire work.46
Elliott's analysis of Gulliver's role, however, makes
Gulliver an exceedingly complicated "compositional center,"
for he is cast in two roles at once. He is both "Gulliver-
author" and "Gulliver-character," Gulliver-author is the
misanthrope, who having been through the agonizing exper
iences of Book IV, sits down to record his experiences and
to recreate the younger and far more na¥ve Gulliver-charac
ter of the first three books. The problems, particularly
within the genre of the imaginary voyage, of maintaining
such a point of view were staggering, for as Elliott points
out, Swift was not Henry James. Moreover, the inevitable
introduction of ironic effects, because of the double point
of view, tends to remove the barriers between Gulliver as
author and Swift, thus approaching the old trap of the
46"Gulliver as Literary Artist," Journal of English
Literary History. XIX (March 1952), 50.
283
identification of Swift and Gulliver. Elliott concludes:
For about three-quarters of the book, Gulliver as
author maintains ironic control over his material;
he is objective, that is, in presenting the charac
ter of himself in time past, and we are at one with
the author in the unspoken condemnation of the
younger Gulliver's lack of moral insight. For the
purposes of interpretation, there is no significant
distinction between Swift and Gulliver-author. But
as the events Gulliver is describing approach more
and more closely to the actual time of writing he
loses his objectivity, the "physical distance"
between himself and his character disappears, and the
attitudes of Gulliver-author and Gulliver-character
become one. As long as Gulliver is in Houyhnhnmland
this identification does not bother. . . . But when
we see Gulliver, in the world once more, confronted
dramatically with human good, we suddenly realize
that the writer who identifies himself completely
with his character, as Gulliver has done, is likely
to fail artistically.47
In ascertaining whether Gulliver's failure is also
Swift's, Elliott judges Swift responsible for the unsatis
factory resolution of the confusions between Gulliver as
ingenue and Gulliver as critic, and he also believes
Gulliver's failure to understand the significance of
the meeting with the Portuguese is in some sense
matched by Swift's artistic failure to relate that
incident . . . adequately to the Houyhnhnm--Yahoo
dichotomy. (p. 63)
Page 62. Elliott cites T. S. Eliot's statement in
"Tradition and the Individual Talent" that "'the more per
fect the artist, the more completely separate in him will
be the man who suffers and the mind which creates," and
observes that this may well be the basis of Gulliver's
artistic failure at this point (p. 62).
284
Yet, Elliott admits that, because the pride of reason has
committed Gulliver to "a shallow and single-minded vision,”
he damns himself
. . . with magnificent and unconscious irony . . .
and in so doing, measures the distance between the
shallowness of his insight into the human condition
and the great complexity of insight which was
Swift's. (p. 63)
Ewald concedes that Elliott's view of Gulliver as an
ironist solves the problem of the role of Gulliver, tending
to make him a consistent character, and giving the book "a
well-defined point of view, in Henry James's sense.But
he believes that Swift really used his persona more freely,
"without a novelist's primary regard for the absolute
integrity of the fictitious character itself" (p. 148).
The role of Gulliver in Ewald's view is as a satiric cen
ter, and he concludes that, though there are technical
problems and occasional flaws in the presentation of
Gulliver as both naive voyager and disillusioned misan
thrope, Swift has effectively achieved his satiric purpose,
if not the aesthetic purpose of James. Ewald appears to
imply some unfairness in judging the proto-novel of Swift
by the aesthetic standards of a far more sophisticated
^^The Masks of Jonathan Swift, p. 148.
285
twentieth century novelist.
Most responsible critics have continued to protest
the identification of Swift and Gulliver. Ehrenpreis
(1952), for instance, states that, "No identification is
less likely," and that "if Gulliver is anyone, he is the
reader.Samuel Monk (1955), after describing Gulliver
as a fine example of the "bluff, good-natured, honest
Englishman," asserts:
All of this Gulliver is; but let us note carefully what
he is NOT. He is NOT Jonathan Swift. The meaning
of the book is wholly distorted if we identify the
Gulliver of the last voyage with his creator, and
lay Gulliver’s misanthropy at Swift's door. He is a
fully rendered, objective, dramatic character. . . .
Like King Lear, he begins in simplicity, grows into
sophistication, and ends in madness. Unlike King
Lear, he is never cured.50
The period 1890 to 1960 closes, however, with a curi
ously ambivalent statement of the matter by A. E, Dyson:
How far is Gulliver a satiric device, and how far
(if at all), does he come to be a spokesman for
Swift himself? The answer seems to me to be by no
means clear. If we accept Gulliver as Swift's
spokesman, we end in a state of despair. On this
showing, it would seem that Swift has openly aban
doned his positives, and that when he avows that he
has now "done with all such visionary schemes" as
49"Swift and Satire," p. 312.
^"The Pride of Lemuel Gulliver," Sewanee Review.
LVIII (Winter 1955), 118.
286
trying to reform the Yahoos "forever," he has passed
from ironic exaggeration to sober truth. Few read
ers will be willing to take this view, especially
when they reflect upon the dangers in store for
those who identify themselves with Gulliver too
readily. And yet, if we reject this, what is the
alternative to be? Swift leads us very skillfully
to follow Gulliver step by step. If at some point
we depart from his view of himself we have to de
part also from the Houyhnhnms: who seem, however,
to be an incarnation of Swift's actual positives,
and the very standard against which the Yahoos are
tried and found wanting.51
While Dyson's dilemma seems the exception to the rule
in the mid-twentieth century assessment of the role of
Gulliver, it embodies a tone of wariness which becomes
apparent, though usually less obviously, in the fifties.
So many alternative propositions concerning Gulliver have
been cogently offered, that critics offering additional
evidence more and more frequently do so with less self-
assurance than was characteristic of the nineteenth century
and early twentieth century. In the main, however, critics
of the forties and fifties agreed that, whatever else he
was, Gulliver was not Swift. Whether he was both Gulliver-
author and Gulliver-character, Gulliver as satiric center,
Gulliver as comic or tragic victim, or Gulliver as Jamesian
***"Swift: The Metamorphosis of Irony," pp. 59-60.
See above, p. 259, for further comment on Dyson's dilemma.
287
•’ window," the reader of critical studies was left to
decide. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive op-
t ions.
The Unity of Gulliver
Throughout the entire period 1890 to 1960, questions
regarding the unity of Gulliver * s TraveIs have been raised.
Until the period 1940 to 1960, the answers were usually
negative. In the forties and fifties, however, a coterie
of critics sought to defend the unity of Gulliver. incor
porating Books III and IV within their patterns of justifi
cation.
Many of those who attacked the unity of Gulliver did
so on the basis that it contained imperfectly assimilated
passages, which had been originally intended for the
Scriblerus Papers. Harold Williams (1926) stated the gen
eral view that in the voyages to Lilliput and Laputa
. . . the narrative is less uniform. They are more
closely related to the original design of Martinus
Scriblerus, the political references are far more
numerous, and the point of view is different. The
unequal and disjointed handling of the story in
Part III is obvious; and its general inferiority
aroused comment from the first. Part I also betrays
the marks of recasting and interpolation. ^ 2
^^Gulliyer’s Travels (London, 1926), p. xviii.
288
Williams calls the opening of Book I a rather casual
"romantic voyage," which is soon converted into satire
upon social and ecclesiastical policy only to change again,
in Chapter VI, into an exposition of Swift's own thoughts,
which have a more or less Utopian cast.
Quintana, both in The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift
(1936) and in his Introduction (1955), is similarly con
cerned over the lack of artistic unity in Books I and III.
In connection with Book I, he was particularly distressed
53
by the intrusion of Utopian elements in Chapter VI.
However, Quintana's shift in position between 1936 and 1955
is instructive. In 1936, he attributed the defects to the
mingling of old and new elements (pp. 307, 311), but in
1955 he writes:
The contrary theory, according to which Gulliver's
Travels is all new writing without any patchwork at
all, attempts to establish for Parts I and III a
consistency of allusion, political allegory, and
specific intent that is not wholly convincing. But
whichever way we may be led to interpret the evi
dence, we ought not to lose sight of the fact that
Swift's plan and his tactical execution of it are to
be judged by the achievement. . . . However, they
got there, the inconsistencies of detail are part
of the total effect. Whether they enhance this
effect or not--an interesting question--they cer
tainly do not seriously mar it. (Intro., p. 147)
53
Mind and Art, p. 311; Introduction. pp. 147-148.
289
Herbert Davis (1947) and John Middleton Murry (1955)
are less flexible. Davis notes the usual problems of
disunity in Book I and III, though he does deviate from
majority opinion as to the cause of disunity in Book 1 1 1 : 5 4
The real reason why so many readers have felt that
. . . the third book is confused and less effective
than the others is not simply that Swift was making
use of old stuff remaining from the days of the
Scriblerus Club; it is rather that he was adding
even after the rest of the book was finished pas
sages of political satire in which he was tempted to
celebrate his recent success in Ireland. (pp. 91-
92)
Murry is distinguished by the vigor of his criticism
when he speaks of the "undeniable fact" that
Book III as a whole is definitely inferior to the
others. It is diffuse; it lacks focus. Were it: not
that we should lose the Struldbrugs, it might have
been entirely suppressed without much loss to the
Travels as a w h o l e .55
His statement of the cause of inferiority is equally force
ful:
To explain this inferiority by the fact that Swift
was largely incorporating, without recreating, old
material is not an artistic defense--artistically,
Book III remains a serious blemish on one of the
world's great books--but an explanation of any sort
is worth having. Whereas, if we had to suppose that
the books were composed in the order they are printed,
5^The Satire of Jonathan Swift, pp. 89-90.
55jonathan Swift (New York, 1955), p. 331.
290
the contrast between the aimlessness of Book III
and the masterly directness of Books I, II and IV
would almost compel the hypothesis of some psycho
logical disturbance, (p. 331)
Not all critics confined their criticisms of unity to
the Utopian intrusion in Book I and the heterogeneity of
Book III. For example, both Quintana and Leyburn are dis
turbed by the uneven artistry of Book IV. Quintana is
bothered by what he calls the "sensationalism into which
Swift falls while developing the theme of bestiality" in
his presentation of the Yahoos (Mind and Art, p. 327).
This, he believes,
diverts attention from the concurrent statement of
the life of reason and comes perilously close to
breaking down the perceptions and judgments enforced
in this latter statement. (p. 327)
Leyburn's criticism is similar:
The power of the book comes from our seeing the two
parts of humanity distinct and yet juxtaposed. But
the power of the juxtaposition is weakened because
the baser part is so much more distinctly portrayed.56
As a result, Miss Leyburn finds that "artistically, the
last book seems to me the most mixed of the four."^^
■^"Certain Problems of Allegorical Satire," p. 187.
57por a defense of this particular charge, see David
Nichol Smith, "Jonathan Swift: Some Observations." In
Essays by Divers Hands (Oxford, 1935), pp. 43-45. Smith
291
Perhaps the most serious criticism of the unity of
Gulliver as a whole is that implied by the frequent assump
tion that Gulliver would be a more effective work if Book
III were omitted entirely. The annals of criticism are
full of such remarks as:
No doubt Gulliver would be more nearly perfect as
a work of art if Swift had been content to stop when
he finished Book IV. (Leyburn, p. 174)
or
parts I and II are, each in its way, almost per
fect; had part III been omitted entirely, and
part IV toned down and brought into closer accord
with the second Voyage, Gulliver1s Travels would
have been a finer work of art. (Quintana, Mind
and Art, p. 327)
It was against these attitudes that much of the critical
defense of the unity of Gulliver was directed between 1940
and 1960. The defenders included Horrell, Klinger, Case,
Sutherland, and Reiss. They are joined by the later Quin
tana .
In 1943, Horrell offered an aesthetic critique of
Gulliver. which assumed the functional unity of all four
argues that the willing suspension of disbelief granted to
the abnormalities of Books I and II needs to be granted
also to the notion of the superior nobility of the horses.
Only thus will the reader see the balanced presentation of
the bestial and the noble.
292
books. First, he postulates that
Swift asks us, for the donne fsic] of the book, to
grant Gulliver’s seeing human beings, really the
same human beings, in four different aspects, one
general aspect at a time.58
The first two books present differences which are physical
in scale. The third is a difference in mental scale (p.
490). The fourth presents creatures seemingly different in
kind. The unifying factors are of various sorts. First,
Gulliver, himself, is the fictional center. Second, there
is a clearly defined sense of time and destiny (pp. 492-
494). Third, there is a gradual development of Gulliver's
misanthropism, part of which is supported by Gulliver's
increasingly disasterous experience with men on each of his
outbound voyages.^
In the light of such thematic integration, Horrell
dismisses critics like Eddy who say, "the last book 'is a
distinct unit, differing radically from the earlier
Voyages. and complete in itself"1 (p. 496). Rather, he
^®"What Gulliver Knew," p. 482.
^Pages 492-493. The first disaster is by chance,
when the ship splits on a rock. The second is desertion
by his fellow voyagers. On the third voyage pirates
attack the ship and Gulliver is set adrift in a canoe. On
the fourth, a treacherous crew become pirates and exile
their captain (Gulliver) on a lonely shore.
293
concludes that “Gulliver's Travels is self-consistent like
any work of art, and the fourth book is implicit in the
first three" (p. 497).
Writing on "The Unity of Gulliver's Travels." Samuel
Klinger declares: "The features of relationship and order
among the parts of Gulliver1s TraveIs stand out boldly,"
and this relationship and order are achieved through the
expository devices of balance and contrast.Klinger
traces Swift's method of introducing an idea or motif with
deliberate casualness in an earlier book, and then later
reintroducing it, but always loading the idea upon its
recurrence with a heavy freight of satire. For example, in
the return motif, Gulliver suffers increasing difficulty
in making adjustments to English life when he returns from
his voyage. At first, the adjustments appear to be merely
physical, but later, particularly after the Fourth Voyage,
the difficulty is transposed from physical to moral
adjustment. Klinger believes Gulliver's behaviour is
symbolic
^ Modern Language Quarterly. VI (December 1945),
403.
294
of a contrast which Swift is trying to enforce
between an impossible and a possible situation,
between the ideal and the actual circumstances
which govern life. (p. 404)
While there is, perhaps, an overemphasis upon the cunningly
wrought relationships, there is no hint in Klinger that the
content of Book III lies outside the pattern of balance
and contrast of details, which constitutes the effective
unity of Gulliver.
Arthur Case, after a detailed rejection of the theory
of internal disunity, proceeds to establish unity by means
of a politico-sociological pattern of balance and contrast.
His analysis is succinct:
Each of the four voyages approaches the main problem
in a different way. For the sake of variety there
is an alternation between the negative and positive
statement of principles. The first and third voy
ages are chiefly attacks upon the evils of bad
government, the second and fourth are expositions of
good government. This accounts for both the domi
nant satiric tone of the voyages to Lilliput and
Laputa, and the frequency of topical allusions.
Over this fundamental design is superimposed another.
The first two voyages are carefully contrasted: the
first, or negative one depicts a typical European
government which has become more corrupt than the
average, while the second, or positive one portrays
a government better than the average. In neither
case does Swift proceed to extremes.
Case admits that the design of Gulliver is not absolutely
^ Four Essays, p. 110.
295
symmetrical. The connection between Voyages III and IV is
not the same as that between I and II, as Swift combines
the two extremes of good and bad in IV and devotes the
third voyage to a second description of bad government
lfin esse." not as an extension or repetition of the first
voyage, but a complement to it. Having always blamed the
misfortunes of man upon vice and folly, contraries to right
reason, Swift emphasizes the former in the first voyage and
the second in the third voyage (p. 1 1 1 ).
While he feels that he cannot deny the accusations
of disunity within Book III, Case objects that "It is easy
to overstate the degree of disorganization" (p. 111). The
unifying device proffered by Case is the idea that all four
adventures in Book III are really variations upon the theme
of folly in government (p. 112). Even the seemingly per
sonal reactions to the senility of the Struldbrugs, Case
encompasses within the theme of a rebuke to human folly
(p. 114). While Case's defense of unity within the third
voyage may not be particularly convincing, may indeed be,
as Quintana observed, an example of the intentional fallacy
(Mind and Art. p. x), the fact that Case bothered to make
such a defense is symptomatic of the intense desire in the
forties and fifties to see Gulliver as a unified work.
296
Case offers one other basis for the unity of Gulli
ver, namely, that it is "Swift’s intention to deepen the
character of his principal figure as an integral part of
his main design" (p. 105). He traces this development from
"an amused and superior toleration" of the Lilliputians to
the turning point in the sixth chapter of Book II, where
Gulliver is "really on the defensive for the first time"
(pp. 115-116). A later critic, John Lawlor, picks up this
suggestion by Case and extends it into a complete article
on "The Evolution of Gulliver's Character" (1955).^^ In
general, Lawlor agrees with Case, particularly with the
latter*s analysis of Gulliver's position in the third
book, that of the "'detached and half-cynical commentator
on human life from without,1" who "'in this voyage alone is
an observer and not an actor"' (Lawlor, p. 332; Case, pp.
117-118).
Lawlor disagrees, however, with Case's interpreta
tion of Gulliver at the moment of his rejection by the
Houyhnhnms. Case writes:
In the end the master dismisses Gulliver with regret
and shows no disinclination to his society. In
other words, a somewhat above-average Englishman
6 2
Essays and Studies (London. 1955), pp. 69-73.
297
was not altogether unacceptable company for a per
fect being. (Case, p. 119)
Lawlor reads the relationship between Gulliver and Houyhn-
hnm quite differently. At the opening of Book IV, the
worst that can be said about humanity has left Gulliver
unconvinced. Therefore, more drastic measures must be con
trived. Swift's response is to create an assault from
within. Gulliver, the seasoned observer, is placed in the
company of Yahoos and Houyhnhnms, whom he at first dis
misses as mere beasts, despising the one and condescending
to the other. As time goes on, however, Gulliver becomes
aware of his kinship with the Yahoos and the perfection of
the Houyhnhnms. Finally, when Gulliver has become a wor
shipful lover cf the Houyhnhnms, they decide that, while
he is not a wild Yahoo, in that he possesses "some rudi
ments of reason," he is in fact for that very reason quite
dangerous. Here Swift has penetrated, not to the conclu
sion that "an Englishman was not altogether unacceptable
company for a perfect being," but to "the final truth that
when man falls, he falls below the level of brute crea
tion" (p. 73). Thus, to Lawlor, the artistic strategy
integrating Book IV is the reversal of roles between Gulli
ver and the Houyhnhnms, and the general artistic integra-
298
tion of the Travels is in the personal evolution of Gulli
ver. ^ 3
John Sutherland and Edmund Reiss support the general
defenses of unity proffered by Horrell* Klinger, and Case
by studies of the contributions of Book III. In his R e
consideration of Gulliver’s Third Voyage" (1957), Sutherland
defends Book III as "a work deliberately organized to fill
64
a number of important structural needs. " 0 Since Books I
and II satirize the roots of man’s physical pride and Book
IV "summarizes--in extreme form--satire on the roots of
both physical and intellectual pride," the pattern calls
for "a voyage in between to give an extended criticism of
mankind’s intellectual inadequacies" (p. 46). This,
Sutherland believes, is the achievement of Book III, all
sections being "part of a satirical construction, which
attacks the abuses of early eighteenth century science and
63A similar perspective is given by John W. Tilton
in "Gulliver’s TraveIs as a Work of Art," Bucknell Review,
VIII (December 1959), 246-259. Tilton believes that if
the character of Gulliver is examined closely in its pro
gression toward an inevitable, pride-driven misanthropy,
Swift* 8 careful structure, diction, satire, and irony all
become functional elements in the attainment of an overall
unity.
^ Studies in Philology. LIV (January 1957), 45.
299
scholarship," showing how ridiculous it was to take pride
in them (p. 48). Even the Struldbrugg episode is read as
implying that "practical scientific discoveries are likely
to be a temporary benefit at best" (p. 49).
Through an analysis of "The Importance of Swift's
Glubbdubdrib Episode" (1960),^ Reiss adds further evidence
concerning the structural significance of Book III. He
admits that earlier scholars saw this episode simply as
another incident in a section of Gulliver's Travels already
too crowded with diverse and unrelated voyages, or dismissed
it as a pleasant digression (Eddy, p. 164), or a comment on
the greatness of the Ancients over the Moderns (Murry, p.
334). He notes that even Sutherland called it the only
"notably weak" part of the third voyage (Sutherland, p.
52). Reiss counters with the view that "on his second
voyage Gulliver is the defender of mankind, on his third
the objective observer, and on his fourth the vehement
attacker," and that in the course of his essential observa
tions and education in the third voyage, no episode is more
significant in the development of Gulliver than the
^ Journal of English and Germanic Philology. LIX
(April 1960), 223-228.
300
experience with the dead in Glubbdubdrib (Reiss, p. 223).
It is the "pivotal point in the Travels. in terms of
Gulliver's psychological development," for "in Glubbdub
drib he learned about corruption and incapability from
beings that had no reason to falsify" (p. 228). Again,
Reiss's argument is not so significant as the general
impulse to defend Book III, of which it is a part.
The difference between the views of Quintana in 1936
and his views in 1955 afford convincing evidence that the
defense of the total unity of Gulliver and of the relevance
of Book III to that unity was a phenomenon of the forties
and fifties. In was Quintana, who in 1936 suggested that
Gulliver would have been a finer work of art if only Book
III had been omitted and Book IV "toned down" (Mind and
Art, p. 327). After the work of Horrell, Klinger, and
Case, Quintana apparently rethought his position, and in
his Swift: An Introduction (1955), he too sought to dis
cover unifying patterns in Gulliver. He isolated three:
(1 ) the narrative, itself (including the account of actual
travels, the relation to the imaginary voyage, and the
parody of the imaginary voyage); (2 ) the design underlying
the sequence of the four voyages; and (3) the ironic mode.
301
As an example of the first, Quintana cites the Utopia of
horses in Book IV:
This Utopia of horses, filled with the sound of
whinnying, hoofbeats, and the champing of oats, is
a rational community, true enough, but in outdoing
all other Utopias in point of consistency the satire
directed at man's irrationality suggests that it
might extend itself to include his dreams of a good
society. (p. 160)
In discussing the sequence of the four voyages, Quintana
suggests that Book III
. . . is almost a functional necessity. Like the
scherzo in a traditional four-movement symphony, it
comes between the second and fourth movements to
break the tension and prepare the way for a stronger
climax than could otherwise be achieved. (p. 163)
The ironic mode is essentially the presentation of posi
tive doctrines and precepts, familiar to the eighteenth
century through "the lronLcrefraction supplied by Gulliver,"
who finds himself, "always hitherto a normal and acceptable
person," questioned and finally rejected "as an unwholesome
deviate" (p. 163). This third pattern is, therefore, one
of both "ironic refraction and the comedy of exclusion"
(P. 165).
Thus, though the details with which they supported
their conclusions may differ, it is possible to say that
so far as the unity of Gulliver's Travels is concerned,
twentieth century critics moved from a position of attack
302
to a position of defense. It is also obvious, both in the
analyses of the role of Gulliver and in those of the unity
of his Travels« that most critics in the forties and fif
ties considered Swift's work in terms of a theory of art,
which regards tightness of structure and consistency in
characterization as desirable ends. Their methods were
clearly influenced by enthusiasm for the art of Henry
James and by the pronouncements of T. S. Eliot. Whether or
not these were reasonable criteria to apply to an eighteenth
century imaginary voyage seems almost beside the point,
when one reviews how well Swift came off, though the ques
tion may still remain as to whether or not Swift actually
created as involved and treacherous a work as was assumed
by twentieth century criticism.
Gul^^er as Tragedy or Comedy
It has been a commonplace of criticism to discuss
the competing claims of humor and horror in Gulliver
^Saintsbury represents the tradition when, in speak
ing of Swift's Augustan gravity and gaiety, he says, "In
Swift's case the gravity undoubtedly turns not seldom to
actual grimness, if not to positive horror; and the gaiety,
by a sort of concatenation, to extravagant burlesque and
even sheer nonsense . . . Never, except in Shakespeare,
the eternal exception, has such lightness coexisted with
303
Not, however, until the forties and fifties did critics
seriously debate the classification of Gulliver as tragedy
or comedy. Only two critics made absolute claims for
tragedy--Walter Watkins (1939) and Joe Horrell (1943),
though J. M. Bullitt (1953), Samuel Monk (1955), and Donamy
Dobre£ (1959) detected tragic elements. The advocates of
comedy were more numerous and included John Ross (1941),
Edward Stone (1949), Harold Kelling (1952), Ricardo Quin
tana (1955), and Kathleen Williams (1958).
Watkins opens the case for Gulliver as tragedy with a
comparison of Swift and Hamlet. He finds the roots of
their common melancholia in
a dichotomy of personality expressing itself in an
abnormal sensitivity to the disparity between the world
as it should be and the world as one sees it.6?
Though Watkins admits that ’’ disillusioned idealism is the
state of mind, which usually generates the satiric spirit,”
and that ’’satire by its very nature is akin to comedy,” he
concludes that Swift's "true affinity is with the type of
complex tragedy of which Shakespeare is the greatest
such strength. Peace of the Augustans (London, 1916), p.
32.
^ Perilous Balance, p. 346.
304
exponent" (p. 349). Watkins' proof of this assertion is,
chiefly, an elaborate comparison of Gulliver or Swift with
Hamlet. For example, he compares lines spoken by Hamlet
with the speech of the King of Brobdingnag (p. 347):
What should such fellows as I do, crawling between
earth and heaven? . . . Use every man after his
desert, and vrtio should scape whipping? (Hamlet1
I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to
be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin
that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface
of the earth. (Gulliver)
He also compares the persistent use of imagery in Hamlet
and Gulliver, including that describing the sense of smell,
and finds an identical transference of "outraged spiritual
and ethical values into retching physical terms" (p. 356)
resulting in an identical intensity of loathing. He demon
strates that both works seek to convey a profound and trag
ic disillusionment with self and with all life (p. 3 5 7 ),
and that both do so through concern with the bestial.^®
The argument is interesting, but not particularly convinc
ing, chiefly because of the imperfections in the terms of
6 f t
In Hamlet. "sex becomes the symbol of man's decay
and corruption"; in Swift, sex is a symbol of man's
bestiality, and his inability to bridge the chasm between
spirit and flesh is a matter of much comment (pp. 357-359).
comparison. Sometimes Swift the man, sometimes Gulliver
the work, is compared with either the character Hamlet or
the entire play. Moreover, Watkins complicates his compar
ison by suggesting that the Fourth Voyage, "which is
Swift’s Hamlet," was "conceived and written perhaps more
in the spirit of King Lear" (p. 362). However, he stands
firmly on the ground that Swift's "satire passes over into
tragedy" (p. 365).
With this position, Joe Horrell agrees. In tracing
Gulliver’s career, he observes that what was in the first
books simply dilemma becomes in Book IV crisis, and with
this development "came recognition and reversal, producing
pity and fear" (p. 504). Gulliver's change from naive
ignorance to knowledge produces "a tragic type--man gone
emotionally blind through the excessive keenness of his
intellectual vision" (p. 504).
J. M. Bullitt recognizes the tragic elements in
Gulliver. but he is more interested in tracing the shift
within Gulliver from comedy to a tragic mode, which never
quite becomes real tragedy. Swift's comedy, he asserts,
was "founded upon his perception of a disparity between
reality and the ideal"--a perception not generally granted
to mankind as a whole. So long as Swift focused upon the
306
absurdity of "man-deceived," he
portrayed a comic affectation of self-delusion;
but . . . as he attempted to shock men with graphic
and concrete vividness into seeing how enormous was
the disparity, what began in a comic spirit was
liable to develop into a horror and disgust and
loathing of life itself. (p. 9)
Life became a "ridiculous tragedy" (p. 12). Thus, in Gul
liver , the same elements, which made the early voyages
comic, "the projection of man's complacency and pride
against the background of his real limitation" (p. 14),
become, because of the emotional intensity of Swift's con
cern, akin to tragedy. However, Bullitt stops short of
calling it true tragedy:
The vision of an ideal perfection from which Gulli
ver wakens, to find himself only a Yahoo after all,
has the breadth and passion and despair of tragedy.
And yet this "tragical satire" cannot, as some
readers have urged, be said to attain to the same
level as dramatic tragedy. The disjunction between
the ideal Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos is too complete.
. . . The satiric form and intention is insuffi
cient to support the pressure of Swift's personal
involvement; Gulliver is pushed out as a creature
of irremediable limitations without hope of achiev
ing any real dignity or worth beyond the recogni
tion, in helpless sensitivity, of his own and man
kind's defectiveness. In short, although resigna
tion comes to Gulliver, it is the resignation of an
unwilling and bitter self-knowledge, without the
grandeur which is a necessary quality for the true
tragic catharsis. The fourth voyage of Gulliver's
Travels. therefore, is not a tragedy, but satire
pushed to the breaking point. (pp. 14-15)
307
Bonamy Dobree assumes a very similar view, finding
Gulliver as nearly a tragic work as was produced in the
eighteenth century, yet the "tragedy of unreason"--"the
picture of man's collapse before his corrupt nature, and
his defiance in the face of collapse"--is "frustrated by
satire.
Samuel Monk's view is an even more ambivalent com
promise. He avers,
The surface of the book is comic, but at its center
is tragedy, transformed through style and tone into
icy irony.
Monk is aware of the grim joke in which Gulliver finally
reveals himself as "the supreme instance of a creature
smitten with pride" (p. 129), but he also senses the human
agony of Gulliver.
In general, the advocates of Gulliver as comedy are
more aggressive than those viewing Gulliver as tragedy.
John F. Ross presents a strong case for "The Final Comedy
of Lemuel Gulliver." He believes that the fourth voyage
should not be taken literally as a statement of Swift's
^ English Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century
(Oxford, 1959), p. 447.
70"lhe Pride of Lemuel Gulliver," p. 113.
308
final position,^ and that it is not tragedy, but satiric
comedy. He admits that the fourth book contains a severe,
literal, and direct attack upon Yahoo-man. He believes,
however, that the pictures of the Houyhnhnms contain enough
comic touches to warn the reader against assuming "that
Swift accepts Gulliver's worshipful attitude toward the
horses" (p. 189), and to prepare him for the final comedy.
On the other hand, Gulliver's revolt against his kind is
expressed in such straightforward invective that the read
er, who has not noted Swift's sly exposure of the horses,
is in danger of assuming that this is Swift's final word,
simply because it is Gulliver's. Such is not the case.
Ross asserts that just as Swift avoids identification with
the scale of the giant, while Gulliver does not,72 so Swift
can differentiate between Yahoo and Gulliver, and
does--but Gulliver, himself, is convinced that he
is a Yahoo. (p. 191)
Swift has made Gulliver
not only a constant reminder that horse and Yahoo
71An error of which Ross accuses both Eddy and Quin
tana: Eddy in his assumption that because 'Swift was care
less of his story" the Houyhnhnms do not come through as
better creatures than Gulliver; Quintana in his charges of
the "sensationalism" of Book IV (Ross, pp. 176-177).
^This is obvious in Gulliver's distorted physical
sense, when he returns home.
309
are symbols, but also a constant demonstration that
a human being is not a Yahoo. (p. 191)
Although, for Gulliver, it is heartbreaking, when he and
the Houyhnhnms conclude that humans are, if anything, worse
than Yahoos, and Gulliver is forced to depart from Equine
Eden, "for Swift and the reader it is not wholly a matter
for tears" (p. 192). In the final chapters, Ross finds
further evidence of humour in Swift's presentation of
Gulliver's rigid and oversimplified attitude, particularly
in relation to Don Pedro and to his family. He concludes:
Swift was much more than a corrosive satirist only;
he had a high sense of the comic, and in the final
satiric vision of the concluding chapters of Gulli
ver the Gulliverian discontent is supplemented by,
and enclosed in, comic satire, with Gulliver himself
as the butt. (p. 195)
A further denial of the sense of tragedy is presented
in Edward Stone's "Swift and the Horses: Misanthropy or
73
Comedy?" Hitting, not so much at those who saw elements
of classical or Shakespearean tragedy in Gulliver. as at
those who charged misanthropy, Stone converts the excesses
of Gulliver's reactions at the close of Book IV into instru
ments of humor, much as Ross does. The returned Gulliver,
73
Modern Language Quarterly. X (September 1949),
367-376.
310
avers Stone,
Is temporarily unbalanced, but is so because of his
own folly as much as the world's, and, therefore,
like Don Quixote, is an object of laughter as much as
of pity. (p. 374)
Stone relegates the misanthropic elements in the Travels
to Gulliver and implies that Swift and the reader join in
merriment at Gulliver's expense. He makes no formal claims
for comedy, but he undercuts those who argue for tragedy.
Harold Kelling discusses Gulliver as "A Comedy of
Humours.His position is precisely stated. He identi
fies Gulliver's humor as gullibility, and proposes that, as
a result, he takes on the humor peculiar to each of the
societies he encounters, most obviously, of course, in
Book IV. Kelling concludes:
Gulliver's Travels can and should be read as a work
of art rather than a sermon . . . It is a sermon--
or a tragedy, as W. B. C. Watkins has called it--
only if we identify Swift and Gulliver. If we see
Gulliver not as Dean Swift or as Hamlet but as Don
Quixote, a humourist, Gulliver's Travels is in the
tradition of great comedy, offering hope for man's
situation rather than offering heroic despair be
cause man cannot achieve perfection. . . . Swift
University of Toronto Quarterly. XXI (1952), 362-
375. Kelling proposes that Swift's treatment of Gulliver's
humor is more like that of Corbyn Morris in his "Essay
towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Raillery,
Satire, and Ridicule" (London, 1744), than that of Ben
Johnson (pp. 362-363).
311
challenges the reader to make his own applications,
by using as a narrator a humourist who so distorts
the normal world of experience that the reader can
find his own mean between extremes. The ironic art
of Gulliver's Travels deals with extremes. (pp.
374-375)
Quintana presents Gulliver as a "satiric comedy"--"a
comedy of exploration and exclusion," rather than "comedy
of discontinuity" (discrepancy between appearance and
reality) or "comedy of special situation" (Intro.» p. 163).
Only when Gulliver indulges in his rhapsody on the bless
ings of long life, before being confronted by the actuality
of the Struldbrugs, does he become involved in the exposure
typical of the comedy of discontinuity. Never does he
create the situations in which he finds himself. Rather, in
his explorations of various societies, he finds himself
excluded as unacceptable, most dramatically so in Book IV,
where he suffers the overwhelming experience
of one vdio is brought to see himself and his class
--which happens to be the human race--as hopelessly
tainted and deserving ostracism from any rational
society. (p. 165)
But, to Quintana, this is not "a drama of Angst and crisis
in any Kierkegaardian sense," for Gulliver "remains a fig
ure in comedy" (p. 165). Kathleen Williams, following the
lead of Ross, Stone, Kelling, and Quintana, describes
Gulliver as "one of the greatest, sanest, and wisest of the
312
serious comedies of the age of compromise."^5
Although criticism was obviously divided on the issue
of Gulliver as comedy or tragedy, the advocates of comedy
furthered appreciation of Swift's comic artistry and deliv
ered a heavy blow to the charges of Swift's misanthropism;
whereas, the advocates of tragedy tended to retrace old
steps, emphasizing Swift's pessimism and melancholia. As a
whole, the aesthetic criticism of Gulliver. in keeping with
the general trend of criticism in the forties and fifties,
directed attention away from the author to his work and
resulted in more meticulous analyses and interpretations of
all distinctly literary aspects of Gulliver--style, charac
terization, form, and effect. While critics did not agree
on all matters, they clearly distinguished Gulliver from
Swift, defended the artistic validity of the bestial im
agery, established the functional unity of Gulliver, in
cluding Book III, and offered a new appreciation of the
comic elements in Gulliver. Perhaps the greatest differ
ence between the criticism of the nineteenth century and
the twentieth century occurred in the reappraisal of Book
•^Jonathan Swift and the Age of Compromise (Kansas,
1958), p. 218.
313
IV. In 1941, John Ross presented an interesting summation
of the common nineteenth century evaluation of Book IV,
which still had some currency among twentieth century
scholars:
(1) Gulliver is one of the world’s greatest satires,
and perhaps the most severe. (2) Voyage IV is its
climax. And this voyage is plainspoken, terrible,
and overwhelming, upsetting in the extreme to our
normally optimistic view of man’s nature and achieve
ment. (3) The Yahoos are not a true representation
of mankind, nor can horses talk and reason. (4)
It follows from 2 and 3 that the fourth voyage is
indecent and shameful, an insult to humanity. (5)
Since Swift lost his mind at an advanced age, he
was insane, when, years before, he wrote the fourth
voyage. ( 6 ) Therefore, (the conclusion is ex
pressed or implicit) it is advisable not to read
this particular work of art to its conclusion, but
to stop half-way,--that is to say, with the end of
the second voyage. ("Final Comedy," p. 175)
After the labours of the aesthetic critics of the
forties and the fifties, this position was almost com
pletely reversed. Although agreement on meaning has not
been achieved, "A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms"
now stands near or at the top of Swift's creative achieve
ments, and is considered the artistic and philosophic cul
mination of the Travels^ Perhaps, this reversal, more than
any other development, is responsible for the high artistic
position presently granted to the entire work.
CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION
It has been the intent in the preceding chapters to
establish several chronological patterns in the twentieth
century criticism of Gulliver and to present the major
critical contributions of the century within each of these
patterns. The first discernable pattern involved studies
of the texts and sources. These were most numerous between
1920 and 1940. In the late twenties and early thirties,
Harold Williams established the preference for the Faulkner
text, corrected in details, over the Motte editions. Nichol
Smith substantiated 1720 to 1726 as the dates of composi
tion for Gulliver with his publication in 1935 of Swift's
letters to Ford. Arthur Case in 1938 and again in 1945
was instrumental in modifying the notion that Gulliver con
tains numerous passages originally written in 1713-1714
and intended for the Memoirs of Hartinus Scriblerus. In
these same years, Case also defended Swift's errors in
314
315
chronology and geography with some success. In the twen
ties, William Eddy traced the major literary sources of
Gulliver and was joined in literary sleuthing by numerous
critics between 1920 and 1950, though enthusiasm dimin
ished markedly in the forties. Twentieth century studies
of literary sources contributed less through the presenta
tion of totally new sources than through precise parallel
ing of detail in sources already mentioned in the eigh
teenth and nineteenth centuries. The only notable new
offerings were Elbert N. S. Thompson's suggestion of Tom
Brown's Amusements Serious and Comical (1917), Eddy's dis
covery of sequels to Lucian written by D'Ablancourt (1921),
Nicholson and Mohler's parallels from the Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society (1935-37), and John
Moore's introduction of a "French 'Imaginary Voyage' of the
'Realistic' type, the Voyages et Avantures de Jacques
Masse" (1941). The most significant explorations of old
suggestions, in addition to those of Eddy, include Hunt
ington Brown's Rabelais in English Literature (1933),
W. H. Bonner's Captain William Dampier. Buccaneer-Author
(1934), and John F. Ross's Swift and Defoe: A Study in
Relationship (1941). The discussions of literary sources
established both the wide range of literary material from
316
which Swift drew and hla originality In the use of liter
ary parallel or parody.
In the search for political sources, Sir Charles
Firth (1919), Arthur Case (1945), and Irvin Ehrenpreis
(1958) are the primary contributors, though Ehrenpreisfs
chief contribution Is a broadening of interest in political
parallels to include interpretation of political ideas.
The fervid pursuit of political sources is a phenomenon of
1920 to 1950, and the careful, specific identification of
numberless political persons, places, and events is a major
twentieth century contribution. On the whole, source
studies both literary and political moved from the tracing
of specific parallels to presentation of parallels as
satiric parodies upon a literary tradition or as concepts
of significance in the history of ideas. In the 1950's
the interest in sources per se was vested almost exclu
sively in the names and languages used in Gulliver. Here
the debate was lively, acrimonious, and inconclusive.
Psychoanalytic criticism began with Ferenzi's
"Gulliver Phantasies" in 1926 and extended to Norman 0.
Brown's treatment of "The Excremental Vision" in 1959.
However, objections to psychoanalytic treatments were
frequent after 1945. Most psychoanalytic criticism was
presented as a "scientific" attempt to explain the misan
thropy, obscenity, and possible madness of Swift which had
so disturbed the nineteenth century. Gulliver was sub
jected to the same analysis accorded the dreams of neurot
ics with the result that what had been nineteenth century
scatology emerged in the twentieth century as coprophilia
and anal fixation. In 1959, however, Brown reversed the
roles of Swift and his analysts, Swift becoming the super
analyst who in Gulliver presents insights into the uni
versal neurosis of mankind. Thus psychoanalytical criti
cism simply embellished biography with a new terminology
and the flavor of the case history.
Studies relating Gulliver to the history of ideas—
political, scientific, philosophical and religious--began
about 1935 with the inquiries of Marjorie Nicholson and
Nora Mohler and continued until 1960, though from 1945 to
I9 6 0 they competed increasingly with studies of the aes
thetic values of Gulliver. Swift’s political views in
Gulliver were outlined in 1945 by Arthur Case and elabor
ated by Z. S. Fink (1947), Edwin Benjamin (1947), Herbert
Davis (1952), Irvin Ehrenpreis (1952), Richard Dircks
(1960), and Jeffrey Hart (1960). The composite image is
that of a conservative Renaissance Humanist who believes in
318
a balanced, partyless state, free of intrigue and of the
political excesses implicit in a total application of
Locke'8 principles. Nicholson and Mohler (1935-37) estab
lished the positive contributions of scientific relativism
to the thought and structure of Gulliver, stressing the
impact of microscope and telescope. The result was Swift's
presentation of the confusing relativism of man's universe
and of his position therein, together with a sense of the
interrelatedness of large and small in terms of the con
trolling laws of nature.
Critics dealing with the philosophical and religious
views implicit in Gulliver are too numerous to rename, but,
like the critics concerned with political views, they cre
ate a composite image of a conservative who is humanisti
cally inclined. Their Swift avoids the extremes of both
Shaftesbury's optimism and Mandeville's pessimism in his
view of man as neither Houyhnhnm nor Yahoo, but animal
rationis capax. In his distaste for the heresy of instinc
tive goodness with its concommitant denial of original
sin, Swift stands with the conservative, but not extrem
ist, Anglican churchmen of his time. In his distrust of
reason and rationalism as absolutes of human existence he
allies himself with both Anglican clergy and Renaissance
humanist. While critics of the fifties have argued inde
cisively the degree of Christian exegesis involved in
Gulliver, plausible Christian interpretations have been
offered. More important to students of literature has been
the demolition of both Yahoo md Houyhnhnm as literal
representations of actual man and ideal man and the sub
stitution of Yahoo and Houyhnhnm as symbolic representa
tions of the extreme limits of human nature. Recent crit
ics clearly indicate that Gulliver presents in new form the
old paradox of the followers of the via media; the oppo
site of evil is not good but evil. In general, all critics
Gulliver concerned with the history of ideas have found
Swift a conservative, occasionally reactionary, follower
of the middle way. In this he was frequently out of sym
pathy with the extremists and the "modernists" of his own
time8--more a Christian Renaissance Humanist than a Deist
of the era of Englightenment.
The aesthetic critics of the twentieth century were,
in the main, successful in their aim of turning critical
attention from Swift to his writings. The casual remarks of
earlier critics concerning Swift's plain style and his
use of satire, allegory, and irony were given detailed
exposition. The hope of complete scientific objectivity in
320
dealing with Gulliver as a work of art was Inevitably frus
trated by the interrelationships of meaning and art and by
Swift's subtle intellect. Yet, though aesthetic criticism
reached no unanimous conclusions so far as meaning is
concerned, it did increase appreciation of Swift's crafts
manship. Aesthetic critics also agreed that, whatever
else Gulliver migjht be, he was not Swift. They increas
ingly defended the unity of Gulliver's Travels, including
the much criticized Book III, supported by the artistic
validity of the "bestial" imagery, and re-emphasized the
comic elements vrtiich had been more fully appreciated by
Swift's contemporaries than by the intervening nineteenth
century.
In large part, twentieth century criticism of
Gulliver may be viewed as a return to early eighteenth
century enjoyment and acceptance. Nineteenth century crit
icism was so preoccupied with the problems of Swift's
misanthropy, scatology, and possible madness that his sly
satiric thrusts, the positives of his philosophic position,
the complexities of his literary artistry, and his high
comedy were slighted. The popular enthusiasm for Gulliver
:manifested in the eighteenth century remained a puzzle to
t
I most nineteenth century critics who followed the
321
lugubrious views of Swift's eighteenth century biographers.
Only through close and sensitive readings of the text did
critics free themselves from the biographical preoccupation
which plagued criticism from the Remarks of Orrery (1751)
until well into the twentieth century. Nor has the criti
cism since 1900 been fully successful in its flight from
the biographical. Even some of the most distinctively
twentieth century criticism of Gulliver, that of the psy
choanalyst, was least free from biographical concern for
elucidating the man in his work or interpreting the work in
the life of its creator. Generally, however, the empirical
method of science effected an early release from the
stranglehold of emotionalism and biography. Scientific
investigation to determine the facts of the case and
scientific precision in reporting those facts were the pri
mary concerns of textual and source critics. When it
became apparent that fact, however, precise, was of little
value without interpretation of its significance in a
larger context, studies in the history of ideas appeared
more and more numerously. Finally, when it became obvi
ous that the genius of Swift would not be captured solely
by an understanding of the history or of the ideas which
Swift accepted or refuted, the empirical impulse turned its
attention to rhetoric. Detailed and presumably "scientific"
analyses of the devices by which Swift achieved his satiric
or Ironic effects emerged. This twentieth century criti
cism has not resulted in the spontaneous enjoyment evident
in 1726, but a new appreciation of Gulliver has been
achieved. Only through the laborious process of reproduc
ing the eighteenth century situation--the reading of real
and imaginary voyages, the political vagaries, the philo
sophic and religious perspectives--have critics enabled the
modem reader to enjoy that which was enjoyed unconsciously
by Swift's contemporaries. How much the Intellectual
understanding of Swift's rhetoric has contributed to the
average reader's enjoyment of Gulliver, or even the crit
ic's, is perhaps doubtful, though the parallel with the
eighteenth century is still valid. The educated man of the
eighteenth century was still aware of the elaborations of
Renaissance rhetoric and was in the midst of considerable
concern for the restitution of grammatical and rhetorical
norms. In short, any summary of the developments of
twentieth century criticism supports Quintana's statement
that Gulliver "is probably better understood today than at
any time since the earlier eighteenth century" (Introduc-
tion, p. 143). Indeed, this understanding is the maj
contribution of twentieth century criticism.
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Creator Kieffer, Evelyn Thompson (author)

Core Title A Consideration Of The Criticism Of Swift'S 'Gulliver'S Travels,' 1890 To1960

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Literature, General,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Crittenden, Walter M. (committee chair), Hadley, Paul E. (committee member), McElderry, Bruce R. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-360338

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Identifier 6503110.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-360338 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 6503110.pdf

Dmrecord 360338

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Kieffer, Evelyn Thompson

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Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

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