Moldova State University The Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures
The Department of World Literature
Course paper:
Human being hypostases in “Gulliver’s travels” by Johnatan Swift.
Executed by:
III- d year student, group 394
Gaivarovschi Iana Scientific instructor:
B.A.Cristina Babina
Chisinau 2007
Contents:
Introduction
Chapter I: General background of the 18th century English literature
1.1. The consolidation of the novel
1.2.Johnatan Swift –a great pamphleteer of his age
Chapter II: Hyman being hypostases in “Gulliver’s Travels” by Johnatan Swift
2.1. The protagonist presentation .
2.2. The changing hypostases of the protagonist
Conclusions
Bibliography
Introduction
The purpose of this course paper is to investigate the human being hypostases as presented in Johnathan Swift’s great work “Gulliver’s travels”.
Gulliver’s Travels was a controversial work when it was first published in 1726. In fact, it was not until almost ten years after its first printing that the book appeared with the entire text that Swift had originally intended it to have. Ever since, editors have excised many of the passages, particularly the more caustic ones dealing with bodily functions. Even without those passages, however, Gulliver’s Travels serves as a biting satire, and Swift ensures that it is both humorous and critical, constantly attacking British and European society through its descriptions of imaginary countries. Gulliver’s Travels is about a specific set of political conflicts, but if it were nothing more than that it would long ago have been forgotten. The staying power of the work comes from its depiction of the human condition and its often despairing, but occasionally hopeful, sketch of the possibilities for humanity to rein in its baser instincts.
“Originally, the novel was to be the story of an imaginary world voyage by a certain Martin Scriblerus, but in the interval between 1720-1726 Swift had changed the name of the hero to Lemuel Gulliver”[1].
In this course- paper we tried to review the following points: the presentation of the time when the novel “Gulliver’s Travels” was written, the explanation of the literary term - the novel, also an important part in this course-paper takes the biography and the literary activity of such a great pamphleteer as Johnatan Swift.
The second part of the course-paper is composed of two parts: in the first one is presented the protagonist of the story- Lemuel Gulliver, his character and the main facts about his life; the second one is about the human metamorphoses happened with the protagonist of the novel. In this part are disclosed the main metamorphoses, which had changed the life and the internal world of the main character.
I. General background of the 18th century English literature
POLITICAL CONDITIONS. During the first part of the eighteenth century the direct connection between politics and literature was closer than at any previous period of English life; for the practical spirit of the previous generation continued to prevail, so that the chief writers were very ready to concern themselves with the affairs of State, and in the uncertain strife of parties ministers were glad to enlist their aid. On the death of King William in 1702, Anne, sister of his wife Queen Mary and daughter of James II, became Queen. Unlike King William she was a Tory and at first filled offices with members of that party. But the “Whigs supported the English campaigns under the Duke of Marlborough against Louis XIV”[2], who therefore gradually regained control, and in 1708 the Queen had to submit to a Whig ministry. She succeeded in ousting them in 1710, and a Tory cabinet was formed by Henry Harley (afterwards Earl of Oxford) and Henry St. John (afterwards Viscount Bolingbrook). On the death of Anne in 1714 Bolingbrook, with other Tories, was intriguing for a second restoration of the Stuarts in the person of the son of James II (the 'Old Pretender'). But the nation decided for a “Protestant German prince, a descendant of James I through his daughter Elizabeth”[3], and this prince was crowned as George I--an event which brought England peace at the price of a century of rule by an unenlightened and sordid foreign dynasty. The Tories were violently turned out of office; Oxford was imprisoned, and Bolingbrook, having fled to the Pretender, was declared a traitor. Ten years later he was allowed to come back and attempted to oppose Robert Walpole, the Whig statesman who for twenty years governed England in the name of the first two Georges; but in the upshot Bolingbrook was again obliged to retire to France. How closely these events were connected with the fortunes of the foremost authors we shall see as we proceed.
THE GENERAL SPIRIT OF THE PERIOD. The writers of the reigns of Anne and George I called their period the Augustan Age, because they flattered themselves that with them English life and literature had reached a culminating period of civilization and elegance corresponding to that which existed at Rome under the Emperor Augustus. They believed also that both in the art of living and in literature they had rediscovered and were practicing the principles of the best periods of Greek and Roman life. In our own time this judgment appears equally arrogant and mistaken. In reality the men of the early eighteenth century, like those of the Restoration, largely misunderstood the qualities of the classical spirit, and thinking to reproduce them attained only a superficial, pseudo-classical, imitation. ............
