ASSIGNMENT

PAPER: 4

THE NEO-CLASSICAL LITERATURE:

TOPIC   :   “GULLIVER’S TRAVELS AS AN ALLEGORY.”

NAME     :   BHALIYA UMA H.

ROLL NO:  02

SEM -1: M.A. PART-1

BATCH:  2010-2011

SUBMITTED TO:  MISS. RUCHIRA DUDHREJA .

Department of English, Bhavnagar University.

v     GULLIVER’S TRAVELS AS AN

ALLEGORY

    ans:  GULLIVER

-        Jonathan swift

  AN ALLEGORY      :-

An allegory means a story, poem, or Gulliver’s travels is an allegorical work. In other words. Everything in it can not be taken literally except by children. The mature reader will understand that swift has a serious moral purpose in writing these account of the voyages of Gulliver to different lands. An allegory conveya its meaning in a veiled and hidden manner, not in an obvious manner. In other words, the real meaning in an allegory does not lie on the surface but is hidden below the surface which we must probe. Swift is here mooking at the way human being behave. We find in the book a merciless exposure of different categories and classes of people – kings, queens, politicians, lawyers, physicians, scientists, and other.

  JONATHAN  SWIFT   :-

Jonathan swift son of English lawyer Jonathan swift the elder, was born in Dublin, Ireland, on November 30, 1667. He grew up there in the care of his uncle before attending Trinity College at the age of fourteen, where he stayed for seven years, graduating in 1688. In that year, he became the secretary of sir William temple, an English politician and member of the Whig party. In 1694, he took religious orders in the church of Ireland and then spent a year as a country parson. He then spent further time in the service of temple before returning to Ireland to become the chaplain of the earl of Berkeley.

    Gulliver’s TRAVELS AS AN ALLEGORICAL SATIRE  :-

Gulliver’s travels is an allegorical satire. This means that swift  does not attack personalities and institutions directly but in a veiled manner. The portrayal of flimnap. The treasure in Lilliput, is a satirical sketch of Sir Robert Walpole who was the prime minister of England from 1715 to 1716 and then again from 1721 from 1742. Dancing on a tight rope here symbolizes Walpole’s skill in parliamentary tactics and political intrigues, similarly, reldresal represents Lord Carteret who was appointed by Walpole to the office of lord lieutenant of Ireland. Again, the phrase, “one of the king’s cushions “, refers to one of king George’s mistresses who helped to restore Walpole to favour after his fall in 1717. The conflict between the high-heels and the low-heels symbolizes the conflict between the two major political parties in England at that time. The dispute between the big-endians and the little-endians symbolizes the quarrels between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. The reaction of the empress of Lilliput to Gulliver’s extinguishing a fire in her apartment is a satirical way of describing Queen Anne’s annoyance with swift for having written a tale of a tub in which swift had attacked religious abuses but which had been misinterpreted by the queen as an attack on religion itself. The pigmies of Lilliput human beings, first reduced to a small scale, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope, and then enlarged to a huge scale as if seen through a magnifying glass. Swift gives us animalsymbolism. Here the yahoos represent human beings with all their good qualities completely left out. While the houyhnhnms represent human being. With their good qualities carried to perfection and their bad qualities completely eliminated.

  AN ALLEGORICAL PICTURE OF MAN’S DEAL NATURE   :-

If swift’s own hints as to the meaning of his book are taken into consideration. The man thesis of the book. Would seem to be hidden in the contrast between the yahoos and the houyhnhnms. Gulliver, occupying a position between the two, part beast, part reason, is swift’s allegorical picture of the dual nature of man. He is not houyhnhnms or animal rationale: not is he a yahoo. He is rationis capax.  We could apply to Gulliver’s travels a passage from the writings of the ancient roman thinker Cicero: “nature has been to man not a mother but a stepmother sending him into the world naked, frail, and infirm.  Toiling under a burden of care, fearful, slothful, and given over to lust, but not without a spark of divine reason”.

  THE ALLEGORICAL MEANING OF THE EMPRESS’S ANNOYANCE WITH GULLIVER  :-

The incident of Gulliver’s extinguishing a fire in the apartment of the Lilliputian empress relates to the circumstances in swift’s own life. The Lilliputian empress was filled with resentment at Gulliver’s action in extinguishing the fire by urinating upon it, and she decided never again to make use of that apartment. This incident is an allegorical representation of the fact that Queen Anne was so disgustes with swift’s a tale of a tub that. In spite of swift’s political services, she could never be prevailed upon to promote swift to a higher office in the church. The result of queen Anne’s annoyance was that swift failed to obtain the position of a bishop which he hoped to get in 1708: and it was with great difficulty that he got the office of a dean in 1713, swift also believed that queen Anne was “a royal prude”, and that her opposition to his promotion was due to the efforts of his enemies. In one of his poems. Swift names the duches of Somerset, the archbishop of York, the earl of Nottingham, and Robert Walpole as his enemies.

“The bury their dead with their head directly downwards because they hold an opinion that after eleven thousand moons they are all to rise again”.

Swift took the holy orders and was ordained a priest of the Anglican Church. He wrote a witty allegory on the religious controversies of the time entitled. A tale of a tub. An allegory is a literary device which consists of the use of symbol to express a deeper philosophic meaning. Serious ideas are symbolically conveyed through a simple fable or parable. A tale of a tub is a celebrated satire on the corruptions in religion conveyed through a simple story of three brothers, peter, martin and jack who allegorically represent the Catholics, Anglicans and non-conformists or Calvinists respectively. Swift holds up for acceptance the Anglican faith. His light-hearted treatment of religious matters so horrified Queen Anne that his prospects of church preferment’s where permanently endangered. He remained the dean of st Patrick’s cathedral in Dublin to the end of his life, and this thwarted ambition sometimes led to a gloomy cynicism.

  GULLIVER’S TRAVELS AS A POLITICAL ALLEGORY  :-

An allegory is a literary genre which is structured in such a way that its meaning could be read on two levels-a primary or literal level, and a secondary and more complex level. An allegory is defined as a narrative in which the characters, plot, setting and occasion, while making sense in themselves also signify a second layer of meaning where they point at another set of people, events and setting either from the writer’s social milieu or recent historical events. It is a figurative mode of representation where ideas are conveyed through symbolism and metaphor. Swift uses satire to highlight the allegorical elements in his tale and thus the allegorical functions as an excellent government and its activities. The allegory and the satire, in a sense, are interwoven inextricably and deftly.

Many readers familiar with eighteenth century politics of England see in the book a revision of those event. Hence it is often studied as a political or historical allegory; the characters and action are based on historical or political personages and events allegories work as a critical interpretative frame and in historical and political allegories, characters and in the text represent people and event in real life. John banyan’s pilgrim’s progress is a moral or religious allegory that presents the Christian philosophy of salvation through suffering. Gulliver’s travels is a political allegory in which the text contains symbolic references to actual people and events in eighteenth century England. Allegory and satire are closely  intertwined. One form serving the other. The flippancy and hollowness of court life are satirized through the Lilliputian ministers and their antics. Sir Robert Walpole seems to be presented in the person of flimnap the treasured while skyresh bologna has been identified  as possibly, the earl of Nottingham. The punishment. Decreed for Gulliver’s namely  of putting out his eyes and starving him instead of putting him to death at once is curiously reminiscent of the crown’s decree on lord Bolingbroke and the earl of oxford. They were accused of high misdemeanor instead of high treason and hence escaped the death penalty. For the sentence only entailed a loss of their titles and estates. Lilliput’s hostility towards and the battle with blefuscu bring to mind the antagonism between England and France at the time. The Whig and Tory parties presented in the text as tramecksan and slamecksan are differentiated by the height of their Neels, thus trivializing the principles they stood for. Religious disputes and theological arguments between the Roman Catholic and the Anglican churches are lampooned in the form of the conflict between the big-endians and the little-engians.

As a political allegory of europen civilization, swift presents the aspects of war and the European propensity for destruction, particularly in the parallels that one can draw between Lilliput’s desire to enslave an already defeated blefescu and the strained relationship between England and France. He also indirectly criticizes the arrogance of European imperialists who civilized through brutality and opperession while masking their chief motive which was greed. Patterns of war and destruction are woven into the allegorical motif here to explicate the existing political situation that swift is satirizing.