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Swift, Jonathan

Entry updated 7 July 2026. Tagged: Author.

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(1667-1745) Irish satirist, cleric, poet and author, dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, from 1713, who began publishing with the relatively innocuous Ode: to the King on his Irish Expedition (1691 chap), but who soon composed A Tale of a Tub [for subtitle see Checklist] (1704) anonymous, written almost a decade before it was published. Along with the title squib, the book incorporated a second Satire, usually called today "The Battle of the Books", in which books in a Library take sides in a pitched battle highlighting the contemporary debate on the benefits or failings of classical literature over modern. Swift was generally on the side of the classicists and would often revert to the imagery of the fantastic to contrast political and religious problems that arose in the cause of progress.

Most of his work treats these issues at a pitch of paradoxical hyperbole, some examples of which arose from discussions with fellow members of the Scriblerus Club, founded in London in 1714, which included the physician and satirist John Arbuthnot, who provided Swift with a variety of examples of scientific quackery. Occasionally, despite his attempts to Parody science, Swift exhibited prescience. He noted the perils of increased longevity without improved healthcare, he suggested the state education of children and, most remarkably, stated that Mars had two moons, a fact that was not proved until 1877.

As these examples suggest, Swift's strategy was never better exemplified than in his most famous work, perhaps the most important of all works of Proto SF, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and Then a Captain of Several Ships (1726; rev 1735) [for details see Checklist], better known today as Gulliver's Travels. This short form of the title first appeared as part of the explanatory apparatus of the revised 1735 version, though not yet on the title page. Written and published during years of cultural turmoil which almost simultaneously generated Satires like The Beggar's Opera (performed 17 January 1728 Theatre-Royal, London; 1729) by John Gay (1685-1732) and the Dunciad (1728; 1843) by Alexander Pope (1688-1744), the work is also in part pure sf, making use of and in some cases inventing narrative strategies, now basic to sf, designed to convey narrative verisimilitude; over and above the very numerous Gulliver spinoffs, its influence on subsequent sf, both direct and indirect, has been enormous, as for example on H G Wells's The Island of Dr Moreau (1896) and, even more directly, on his late satire Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island (1928).

The four Parts of Gulliver convey its protagonist, who narrates the whole tale in the first person, to four highly distinct venues. It is easy to visualize these venues as comprising separate Islands in an enormous Archipelago, but this organizing assumption does not hold water: each venue is reached as the climax of a separate Fantastic Voyage, and each venue is geographically distinct in various ways, Lilliput being entirely feasible, and Laputa highly speculative.

In Part I Gulliver voyages to Lilliput (and later its twin Island Blefuscu), whose inhabitants are one-twelfth the size of "normal" humans (see Great and Small), who bind him with thread until they come to trust him serve the local monarch; their initial inventory of the contents of his pockets conveys a "Martian" displacement (see Craig Raine) that seems proleptic of much future Proto SF, evoking a sense that Gulliver and his hosts, though clearly human, are also understandable as Aliens in the expanding universe of early eighteenth century exploration. By no means a transparency through which to convey Swift's Satirical points, Gulliver is very much a creature of appetite and bodily functions; a long description of a feast towards the end of this Part powerfully evokes Rabelais. Eventually, on learning that he is too huge and alien not to threaten Lilliputian factions, Gulliver escapes. In good mercantilist fashion, he returns to London and his wife with goods and miniature cattle, which he sells for pounds 600 (around 150,000 today).

Gulliver then take ship again, and in Part II finds himself in Brobdingnag, a continent-sized region connected by an isthmus to the far west of a vaguely conceived North America. He is one-twelfth the size of the Brobdingnagians, and learns a significant lesson: that size counts: that power depends on and is retained through control over something resembling avoirdupois: that shows of legitimacy depend on a cruel imposture. (Swift's own Tory instincts as to the course of British politics seem both inconsistent, when his imagination takes fires, and apotropaic, given his sense that human beings may be described as Yahoos [see below].) He also experiences a deepening estrangement from the odorous facticity of flesh, a revulsion intensified when Brobdingnagian girls play oppressive sex games with him. After a long sojourn in Brobdingnag, and after whose ruler says after interviewing Gulliver at length that he

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 leaves Brobdingnag.

In Part III, his ship is destroyed by pirates, and he escapes in a scull to an Archipelago moderately close to Japan, under the control of an emperor who rules his empire from the floating Island of Laputa. Balnibasrbi, the first surface island he visits, is largely populated by semi-crazed scientific researchers (the first characteristic appearance of the Mad Scientist in literature).  Many of the scientific experiments, akin to some overly abstract projects of the Royal Society (founded 1660) that are here satirized, were to become staples of later sf; though Swift shows their absurdity (one scientist has spent "eight years on a Project for extracting Sun-Beams out of Cucumbers"), he also has sympathy for the imaginative enthusiasm with which they are carried out. Gulliver is then conveyed by Laputa to the subject island of Luggnagg, where court life is oppressively formalized (it may be that nearby Japan was on Swift's mind), and which houses the Struldbruggs, a grotesque coterie of senile immortals, "opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but uncapable of Friendship and dead to all natural Affection" (see Immortality). They revolt him not only conceptually, but bodily: marking a further deepening estrangement from the noisome Prison of flesh. He travels onward to Japan, which is not described, and returns to his home.

Gulliver has done well financially from his travels, and although he has some difficulty relating to his faithful (but increasingly prosperous) wife, he impregnates her once more before accepting the offer of the captaincy of another ship. This time, somewhere south of Australia, it is a mutiny that terminates his enterprise. He is put into a "Long-boat", with some "Bracelets, Glass Rings, and other Toys" to trade with indigenes in exchange for ownership of their home: though at points ambivalent, Swift generally conveys an only quasi-comedic contempt for the budding Imperialism of an expanding Europe; he was perhaps writing too soon plausibly to include missionaries (see Religion) in his indictment. He lands on a large solitary Island, and soon encounters a strange, exceedingly repulsive race of semi-bipeds (see Apes as Human), whose

Heads and Breasts were covered with a thick Hair, some frizzled and others lank; they had Beards like Goats, and a long Ridge of Hair down their Backs, and the fore Parts of their Legs and Feet; but the rest of their Bodies were bare, so that I might see their Skins, which were of a brown Buff Colour. They had not Tails, nor any Hair at all on their Buttocks, except about the Anus.... The Females were not so large as the Males; they had long lank Hair on their Heads, and only a sort of Down on the rest of their Bodies, except about the Anus and Pudenda. Their Dugs hung between their fore Feet, and reached almost to the Ground as they Walked.

Gulliver has met the Yahoos, and his "Contempt and Aversion" will never fade, even after the pacific races of horses, known as Houyhnhnms – the rulers of this island, and the only non-human species to appear in Gulliver's Travels – persuade him that he is a Yahoo uniquely capable of speech: though what he tells them about the "evolved" Yahoos of Europe fills them with consternation, and cause them to suggest that he may have "said the thing which was not": for the Houyhnhnms, who live according to Reason, have no conception of anything like "Lying or ­Falshood" [sic]. The more Gulliver describes Homo sapiens, the slimmer become his chances of staying on the island, at peace, untroubled by the stink and sexual avidity (see Sex) of his kind, calm of soul. This cannot last. After five years he is expelled. Back in Britain, he cannot tolerate the physical proximity of a land choked with Yahoos; the thought he had copulated with one of them [his wife] struck him "with the utmost Shame, Confusion and Horror." When she kisses him he swoons.

Eventually, Gulliver determines to write down his adventures, but in doing so never to say the thing which was not. What must be noted throughout is that Gulliver and the interpretation to be put on his responses are themselves subject to the author's complex scrutiny, a complexity of address that many of Swift's readers have, over the centuries, failed to note. But his final assault, in the truth-telling words of a world-traveller, is both remarkably direct and prophetic. Basing himself in part on the Spanish example, he describes how a Western nation creates an empire:

A Crew of Pyrates are driven by a Storm they know not whither; at length a Boy discovers Land from the Topmast; they go on Shore to rob and plunder; they see an harmless People, are entertained with Kindness, they give the Country a new name, they take formal Possession of it for the King, they set up a rotten Plank or a Stone for a Memorial, they murder tow or three Dozen of the Natives, bring away a Couple more by Force for a Sample, return home, and get their Pardon. Here commences a new Dominion.... Ships are sent with the first Opportunity; the Natives driven out or destroyed, their Princes tortured to discover their Gold; a free Licence given to all Acts of Inhumanity and Lust; the Earth reeking with the Blood of its Inhabitants.

At the end of it all, Gulliver now allows his wife to eat dinner at the same table, though in constant fear of being eaten himself.

Swift himself became increasingly misanthropic as he grew older which, for those who knew him, added a bitter element of realism to another satirical strategies which has become important to Dystopian writing generally: he takes an outrageous proposition and debates it quite deadpan, as if he not only supports it but does not seriously expect opposition. Thus he satirized the more inhuman attitudes to poverty (then as now) in A Modest Proposal [for full title see Checklist] (1729 chap) by detailedly suggesting that Overpopulation and starvation in Ireland could each be cured at a stroke by using the children of the poor as food [for Skinned see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below].

But Gulliver's Travels stands alone. Gulliver himself is a surprisingly rounded character, whose increasing ontological insecurity (see again Great and Small; and Perception) deepens a portrait of a sentient being in existential extremis. The Satire is almost never over-prolonged, and rarely predictable. The tale is told with haunted clarity, with a transparent ornateness [see extended quotes] that does not mask Gulliver's increasing anguish, and it may be read with some ease as a novel. [JC/MA/PN]


see also: Astronomy; Bulgaria; Pierre François Guyot Desfontaines; Fantastic Voyages; Humour; Lost Races; Lost Worlds; Mathematics; Race in SF; Sociology; Utopias.

Jonathan Swift

born Dublin, Ireland: 30 November 1667

died Dublin, Ireland: 19 October 1745

works (highly selected)

The bibliographical record of Swift's publications remains somewhat contentious, both A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels in particular continuing to pose some problems. We register a selection of early editions and a critically edited twenty-first century text of the first, and several stages in the progress to a definitive critical text of the novel. We do not knowingly register abridgements or bowdlerizations; but many texts fail to acknowledge changes.

about the author

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