Gulliver's Travels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Gulliver's Travels
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gulliver's Travels (1726,
amended 1735), officially
Travels into Several Remote
Nations of the World, in Four
Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver,
First a Surgeon, and then a
Captain of several Ships, is a
novel by Irish writer and
clergyman Jonathan Swift that
is both a satire on human
nature and a parody of the
"travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best known
full-length work, and a classic
of English literature.
The book became
tremendously popular as soon
as it was published (John Gay
said in a 1726 letter to Swift
that "it is universally read,
from the cabinet council to the
nursery"[1]); since then, it has
never been out of print.
Gulliver's Travels
First Edition of Gulliver's Travels
Author
Jonathan Swift
Original title
Travels into Several Remote
Nations of the World, in
Four Parts. By Lemuel
Gulliver, First a Surgeon,
and then a Captain of
several Ships
Country
Ireland
Language
English
Genre(s)
Satire and sometimes
Science Fiction
Publisher
Benjamin Motte
Publication date 1726
Contents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver's_Travels#Major_themes
Media type
Print
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1 Plot summary
1.1 Part I: A Voyage
to Lilliput
1.2 Part II: A
Voyage to
Brobdingnag
1.3 Part III: A
Voyage to Laputa,
Balnibarbi,
Luggnagg,
Glubbdubdrib, and
Japan
1.4 Part IV: A
Voyage to the
Country of the
Houyhnhnms
2 Composition and
history
2.1 Faulkner's 1735
edition
2.2 Lindalino
3 Major themes
4 Cultural influences
5 Allusions and
references from other
works
5.1 References
5.2 Sequels and
imitations
5.3 Uses of
characters
5.3.1 Gulliver
5.3.2
Lilliputians
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5.3.3
Houyhnhnms
6 Adaptations
6.1 Literary
abridgments
6.2 Music
6.3 Film, Television
and Radio
6.4 Parody
7 See also
8 References
9 External links
9.1 Online Text
9.2 Film
9.3 Other
Information
Plot summary
The book presents itself as a simple traveller's narrative with the
disingenuous title Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, its
authorship assigned only to "Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, then a captain
of several ships". Different editions contain different versions of the
prefatory material which are basically the same as forewords in modern
books. The book proper then is divided into four parts, which are as follows.
Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput
May 4, 1699 — April 13, 1702
The book begins with a short preamble in which
Gulliver, in the style of books of the time, gives
a brief outline of his life and history prior to his
voyages.
He enjoys traveling, although it is that
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voyages. He enjoys traveling, although it is that
love of travel that is his downfall.
Mural depicting Gulliver
surrounded by citizens
of Lilliput.
On his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore
after a shipwreck and awakes to find himself a
prisoner of a race of people one-twelfth the size
of normal human beings, less than 6 inches
high/15 cm high, who are inhabitants of the neighbouring and rival countries
of Lilliput and Blefuscu. After giving assurances of his good behaviour, he is
given a residence in Lilliput and becomes a favourite of the court. From
there, the book follows Gulliver's observations on the Court of Lilliput,
which is intended to satirise the court of George I (King of England at the
time of the writing of the Travels). Gulliver assists the Lilliputians to subdue
their neighbours the Blefuscudians by stealing their fleet. However, he
refuses to reduce the country to a province of Lilliput, displeasing the King
and the court. Gulliver is charged with treason and sentenced to be blinded.
With the assistance of a kind friend, Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, where he
spots and retrieves an abandoned boat and sails out to be rescued by a
passing ship which safely takes him back home. The Building of residence
that Gulliver is given in Lilliput is of note, as in this section he describes it
as a temple in which there had some years ago been a murder and the
building had been abandoned. Swift in this section, is revealing himself as a
member of the Freemasons; this being an allusion to the murder of the grand
master of the Freemasons, Hiram Abiff.
Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag
June 20, 1702 — June 3, 1706
When the sailing ship Adventure is steered off
course by storms and forced to go in to land for
want of fresh water, Gulliver is abandoned by
his companions and found by a farmer who is
72 feet (22 m) tall (the scale of Lilliput is
approximately 1:12; of Brobdingnag 12:1,
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approximately 1:12; of Brobdingnag 12:1,
Gulliver Exhibited to the
judging from Gulliver estimating a man's step
Brobdingnag Farmer by
being 10 yards (9.1 m)). He brings Gulliver
Richard Redgrave
home and his daughter cares for Gulliver. The
farmer treats him as a curiosity and exhibits him
for money. The word gets out and the Queen of Brobdingnag wants to see
the show. She loves Gulliver and he is then bought by her and kept as a
favourite at court.
Since Gulliver is too small to use their huge chairs, beds, knives and forks,
the queen commissions a small house to be built for Gulliver so that he can
be carried around in it. This box is referred to as his travelling box. In
between small adventures such as fighting giant wasps and being carried to
the roof by a monkey, he discusses the state of Europe with the King. The
King is not impressed with Gulliver's accounts of Europe, especially upon
learning of the usage of guns and cannons. On a trip to the seaside, his
"travelling box" is seized by a giant eagle which drops Gulliver and his box
right into the sea where he is picked up by some sailors, who return him to
England.
Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg,
Glubbdubdrib, and Japan
August 5, 1706 — April 16, 1710
After Gulliver's ship is attacked by pirates, he is marooned near a desolate
rocky island, near India. Fortunately he is rescued by the flying island of
Laputa, a kingdom devoted to the arts of music and mathematics but utterly
unable to use these for practical ends.
Laputa's method of throwing rocks at rebellious surface cities also seems the
first time that aerial bombardment was conceived as a method of warfare.
While there, he tours the country as the guest of a low-ranking courtier and
sees the ruin brought about by blind pursuit of science without practical
results in a satire on the Royal Society and its experiments.
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results in a satire on the Royal Society and its experiments.
While waiting for passage Gulliver takes a short side-trip to the island of
Glubbdubdrib, where he visits a magician's dwelling and discusses history
with the ghosts of historical figures, the most obvious restatement of the
"ancients versus moderns" theme in the book. He also encounters the
struldbrugs, unfortunates who are immortal, but not forever young, but
rather forever old, complete with the infirmities of old age. Gulliver is then
taken to Balnibarbi to await a Dutch trader who can take him on to Japan.
While there, Gulliver asks the Emperor "to excuse my performing the
ceremony imposed upon my countrymen of trampling upon the crucifix",
which the Emperor grants. Gulliver returns home, determined to stay there
for the rest of his days.
Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms
September 7, 1710 – July 2, 1715
Despite his earlier intention of remaining at home, Gulliver returns to sea as
the captain of a 35 ton merchantman as he is bored of his employment as a
surgeon. On this voyage he is forced to find new additions to his crew who
he believes to have turned the rest of the crew against him. His pirates then
mutiny and after keeping him contained for some time resolve to leave him
on the first piece of land they come across and continue on as pirates. He is
abandoned in a landing boat and comes first upon a race of (apparently)
hideous deformed creatures to which he conceives a violent antipathy.
Shortly thereafter he meets a horse and comes to understand that the horses
(in their language Houyhnhnm or "the perfection of nature") are the rulers
and the deformed creatures ("Yahoos") are human beings in their base form.
Gulliver becomes a member of the horse's household, and comes to both
admire and emulate the Houyhnhnms and their lifestyle, rejecting humans as
merely Yahoos endowed with some semblance of reason which they only
use to exacerbate and add to the vices Nature gave them. However, an
Assembly of the Houyhnhnms rules that Gulliver, a Yahoo with some
semblance of reason, is a danger to their civilization and he is expelled. He
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semblance of reason, is a danger to their civilization and he is expelled. He
is then rescued, against his will, by a Portuguese ship, and is surprised to see
that Captain Pedro de Mendez, a Yahoo, is a wise, courteous and generous
person. He returns to his home in England. However, he is unable to
reconcile himself to living among Yahoos; he becomes a recluse, remaining
in his house, largely avoiding his family and his wife, and spending several
hours a day speaking with the horses in his stables.
Composition and history
It is uncertain exactly when Swift started writing Gulliver's Travels, but
some sources suggest as early as 1713 when Swift, Gay, Pope, Arbuthnot
and others formed the Scriblerus Club, with the aim of satirising thenpopular literary genres. Swift, runs the theory, was charged with writing the
memoirs of the club's imaginary author, Martinus Scriblerus. It is known
from Swift's correspondence that the composition proper began in 1720 with
the mirror-themed parts I and II written first, Part IV next in 1723 and Part
III written in 1724, but amendments were made even while Swift was
writing Drapier's Letters. By August 1725 the book was completed, and as
Gulliver's Travels was a transparently anti-Whig satire it is likely that Swift
had the manuscript copied so his handwriting could not be used as evidence
if a prosecution should arise (as had happened in the case of some of his
Irish pamphlets). In March 1726 Swift travelled to London to have his work
published; the manuscript was secretly delivered to the publisher Benjamin
Motte, who used five printing houses to speed production and avoid
piracy. [2] Motte, recognising a bestseller but fearing prosecution, simply cut
or altered the worst offending passages (such as the descriptions of the court
contests in Lilliput or the rebellion of Lindalino), added some material in
defence of Queen Anne to book II, and published it anyway. The first edition
was released in two volumes on October 26, 1726, priced 8s. 6d. The book
was an instant sensation and sold out its first run in less than a week.
Motte published Gulliver's Travels anonymously and, as was often the way
with fashionable works, several follow-ups (Memoirs of the Court of
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with fashionable works, several follow-ups (Memoirs of the Court of
Lilliput), parodies (Two Lilliputian Odes, The first on the Famous Engine
With Which Captain Gulliver extinguish'd the Palace Fire...) and "keys"
(Gulliver Decipher'd and Lemuel Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote
Regions of the World Compendiously Methodiz'd, the second by Edmund
Curll who had similarly written a "key" to Swift's Tale of a Tub in 1705)
were produced over the next few years. These were mostly printed
anonymously (or occasionally pseudonymously) and were quickly forgotten.
Swift had nothing to do with any of these and specifically disavowed them
in Faulkner's edition of 1735. However, Swift's friend Alexander Pope wrote
a set of five Verses on Gulliver's Travels which Swift liked so much that he
added them to the second edition of the book, though they are not nowadays
generally included.
Faulkner's 1735 edition
In 1735 an Irish publisher, George Faulkner, printed a complete set of
Swift's works to date, Volume III of which was Gulliver's Travels. As
revealed in Faulkner's "Advertisement to the Reader", Faulkner had access to
an annotated copy of Motte's work by "a friend of the author" (generally
believed to be Swift's friend Charles Ford) which reproduced most of the
manuscript free of Motte's amendments, the original manuscript having been
destroyed. It is also believed that Swift at least reviewed proofs of Faulkner's
edition before printing but this cannot be proven. Generally, this is regarded
as the editio princeps of Gulliver's Travels with one small exception,
discussed below.
This edition had an added piece by Swift, A letter from Capt. Gulliver to his
Cousin Sympson which complained of Motte's alterations to the original text,
saying he had so much altered it that "I do hardly know mine own work" and
repudiating all of Motte's changes as well as all the keys, libels, parodies,
second parts and continuations that had appeared in the intervening years.
This letter now forms part of many standard texts.
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Lindalino
The short (five paragraph) episode in Part III, telling of the rebellion of the
surface city of Lindalino against the flying island of Laputa, was an obvious
allegory to the affair of Drapier's Letters of which Swift was proud.
Lindalino represented Dublin and the impositions of Laputa represented the
British imposition of William Wood's poor-quality copper currency.
Faulkner had omitted this passage, either because of political sensitivities
raised by being an Irish publisher printing an anti-British satire or possibly
because the text he worked from didn't include the passage. It wasn't until
1899 that the passage was finally included in a new edition of the Collected
Works. Modern editions thus derive from the Faulkner edition with the
inclusion of this 1899 addendum.
Isaac Asimov notes in The Annotated Gulliver that Lindalino is composed of
double lins; hence, Dublin.
Major themes
Gulliver's Travels has been the recipient of several designations: from
Menippean satire to a children's story, from proto-Science Fiction to a
forerunner of the modern novel.
Published seven years after Daniel Defoe's wildly successful Robinson
Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels may be read as a systematic rebuttal of Defoe's
optimistic account of human capability. In The Unthinkable Swift: The
Spontaneous Philosophy of a Church of England Man Warren Montag
argues that Swift was concerned to refute the notion that the individual
precedes society, as Defoe's novel seems to suggest. Swift regarded such
thought as a dangerous endorsement of Thomas Hobbes' radical political
philosophy and for this reason Gulliver repeatedly encounters established
societies rather than desolate islands. The captain who invites Gulliver to
serve as a surgeon aboard his ship on the disastrous third voyage is named
Robinson.
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Possibly one of the reasons for the book's classic status is that it can be seen
as many things to many different people. Broadly, the book has three
themes:
a satirical view of the state of European government, and of petty
differences between religions.
an inquiry into whether men are inherently corrupt or whether they
become corrupted.
a restatement of the older "ancients versus moderns" controversy
previously addressed by Swift in The Battle of the Books.
In terms of storytelling and construction the parts follow a pattern:
The causes of Gulliver's misadventures become more malignant as time
goes on - he is first shipwrecked, then abandoned, then attacked by
strangers, then attacked by his own crew.
Gulliver's attitude hardens as the book progresses — he is genuinely
surprised by the viciousness and politicking of the Lilliputians but finds
the behaviour of the Yahoos in the fourth part reflective of the
behaviour of people.
Each part is the reverse of the preceding part — Gulliver is
big/small//ignorant, the countries are complex/simple/scientific/natural,
forms of Government are worse/better/worse/better than England's.
Gulliver's view between parts contrasts with its other coinciding part —
Gulliver sees the tiny Lilliputians as being vicious and unscrupulous,
and then the king of Brobdingnag sees Europe in exactly the same light.
Gulliver sees the Laputians as unreasonable, and Gulliver's Houyhnhnm
master sees humanity as equally so.
No form of government is ideal — the simplistic Brobdingnagians enjoy
public executions and have streets infested with beggars, the honest and
upright Houyhnhnms who have no word for lying are happy to suppress
the true nature of Gulliver as a Yahoo and are equally unconcerned
about his reaction to being expelled.
Specific individuals may be good even where the race is bad — Gulliver
finds a friend in each of his travels and, despite Gulliver's rejection and
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horror toward all Yahoos, is treated very well by the Portuguese captain,
Don Pedro, who returns him to England at the novel's end.
Of equal interest is the character of Gulliver himself — he progresses from a
cheery optimist at the start of the first part to the pompous misanthrope of
the book's conclusion and we may well have to filter our understanding of
the work if we are to believe the final misanthrope wrote the whole work. In
this sense Gulliver's Travels is a very modern and complex novel. There are
subtle shifts throughout the book, such as when Gulliver begins to see all
humans, not just those in Houyhnhnm-land, as Yahoos.
Despite the depth and subtlety of the book, it is often classified as a
children's story because of the popularity of the Lilliput section (frequently
bowdlerised) as a book for children. It is still possible to buy books entitled
Gulliver's Travels which contain only parts of the Lilliput voyage.
Cultural influences
From 1738 to 1746, Edward Cave published in occasional issues of The
Gentleman's Magazine semi-fictionalized accounts of contemporary debates
in the two Houses of Parliament under the title of Debates in the Senate of
Lilliput. The names of the speakers in the debates, other individuals
mentioned, politicians and monarchs present and past, and most other
countries and cities of Europe ("Degulia") and America ("Columbia") were
thinly disguised under a variety of Swiftian pseudonyms. The disguised
names, and the pretence that the accounts were really translations of
speeches by Lilliputian politicians, were a reaction to a Parliamentary act
forbidding the publication of accounts of its debates. Cave employed several
writers on this series: William Guthrie (June 1738-Nov. 1740), Samuel
Johnson (Nov. 1740-Feb. 1743), and John Hawkesworth (Feb. 1743-Dec.
1746).
The popularity of Gulliver is such that the term "Lilliputian" has entered
many languages as an adjective meaning "small and delicate". There is even
a brand of cigar called Lilliput which is (not surprisingly) small. In addition
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a brand of cigar called Lilliput which is (not surprisingly) small. In addition
to this there are a series of collectible model-houses known as "Lilliput
Lane". The smallest light bulb fitting (5mm diameter) in the Edison screw
series is called the "Lilliput Edison screw". In Dutch, the word "Lilliputter"
is used for adults shorter than 1.30 meters. Conversely, "Brobdingnagian"
appears in the Oxford English Dictionary as a synonym for "very large" or
"gigantic".
In like vein, the term "yahoo" is often encountered as a synonym for
"ruffian" or "thug".
In the discipline of computer architecture, the terms big-endian and littleendian are used to describe two possible ways of laying out bytes in
memory; see Endianness. One of the satirical conflicts in the book is
between two religious sects of Lilliputians, some of whom who prefer
cracking open their soft-boiled eggs from the little end, while others prefer
the big end.
Allusions and references from other works
References
Philip K. Dick's short story "Prize Ship" (1954) loosely referred to
Gulliver's Travels[3]
Salman Rushdie refers to a country called Lilliput-Blefuscu in his novel
Fury.
Hayao Miyazaki's anime film Laputa: Castle in the Sky is about a
mythical flying island.
Rutherford Calhoun, the fictional narrator of Charles R. Johnson's novel
Middle Passage briefly alludes to the Brobdingnagians.
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In the 9th book of The Time Wars Series, Simon Hawke's The Lilliput
Legion, the protagonists meet Lemuel Gulliver and battle the titular
army. [4]
In Fahrenheit 451, Montag briefly reads a section of Gulliver's Travels
to his wife, who insists that it makes no sense. The section read is "It is
computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered
death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end."
In the anime series Digimon Adventure 02 of the popular Digimon
franchise, episode 28 referred to Gulliver's Travels by Iori who
compared it to that of the Giga House that they were in.
In the novel Waves, by Ogan Gurel, Chapter 6 (Happiness) includes a
descriptive scene in which a fantastically microscopic 'Dr.Lilliput' (a
cross between Gulliver and the Lilliputians) travels inside the brain
touching cells and proteins.
In an episode of Midsomer Murders, "Small Mercies", one of the
victims is found murdered tied down like Gulliver in Lilliput.
Online MMORPG Latale has a town named Lilliput. To the right of this
town, one may fight boats of the Lilliput army. Everything in the town
is miniature, probably about 1/12 the size of your character.
SNES RPG, Mother 2 (EarthBound in US) has a "Your Sanctuary"
location called "Lilliput Steps", it is a series of small footprints.
The third page in Francisco Goya's Bordeaux Album I (also known as
Album H), one of eight albums of personal drawings created by the
Spanish artist, is entitled "Gran coloso durmido (Large giant asleep)." It
depicts the large head of a sleeping man, with dozens of miniature
people next to and on him, having used ladders to climb up. According
to the Goya expert Pierre Gassier (1915–2000) in his catalogue raisonné
of Goya's personal album drawings[5], Goya was directly inspired by
Part I, Chapter I of Gulliver's Travels.
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In the third season episode Evolution of Star Trek: The Next Generation,
Captain Picard makes mention of having Gulliver's story in his head,
feeling over powered by Lilliputians, as the Enterprise was being taken
over by Nanites.
Jane Eyre- throughout the first few chapters jane reads from Gulliver's
Travels.
Sequels and imitations
Many sequels followed the initial publishing of the Travels. The earliest
of these was the Abbé Pierre Desfontaines' Le Nouveau Gulliver ou
Voyages de Jean Gulliver, fils du capitaine Lemuel Gulliver (The New
Gulliver, or the travels of John Gulliver, son of Captain Lemuel
Gulliver), published in 1730. The author was also the first French
translator of Swift's story.
The Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy (1887–1938) wrote two novels
in which a 20th-century Gulliver visits imaginary lands. One, Utazás
Faremidóba (i.e. Voyage to Faremido), recounts a trip to a land with
almost robot-like, metallic beings whose lives are ruled by science, not
emotion, and who communicate through a language based on musical
notes. The second, Capillaria, is a satirical comment on male-female
relationships. It involves a trip by Gulliver to a world where all the
intelligent beings are female, males being reduced to nothing more than
their reproductive function.
Soviet Ukrainian science fiction writer Vladimir Savchenko published
Gulliver's Fifth Travel - The Travel of Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon,
and Then a Captain of Several Ships to the Land of Tikitaks (Russian:
Пятое путешествие Гулливера - Путешествие Лемюэля
Гулливера, сначала хирурга, а потом капитана нескольких
кораблей, в страну тикитаков) - a sequel to the original series in
which Gulliver's role as a surgeon is more apparent. Tikitaks are people
who inject the juice of a unique fruit to make their skin transparent, as
they consider people with regular opaque skin secretive and ugly.
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they consider people with regular opaque skin secretive and ugly.
Davy King's 1978 short story "The Woman Gulliver Left Behind"[6] is a
sort of satirical feminist spin on the tale, telling it from the point of view
of Gulliver's wife. Alison Fell's novel "The Mistress of Lilliput" does
likewise: Mary Gulliver goes travelling herself.
In 1998 the Argentine writer Edgar Brau published El último Viaje del
capitán Lemuel Gulliver (Captain Lemuel Gulliver´s Last Travel), a
novel in which Swift´s character is presented on an imaginary fifth
journey, this time into the River Plate. It satirizes ways and customs of
present day society, including sports, television, politics, etc. To justify
the parody, the narrative is set immediately after the last voyage written
by Swift (precisely, 1722), and the literary style of the original work is
kept throughout the whole story.
The British children's book Mr Majeika on the Internet (2001) by
Humphrey Carpenter includes modernized parallels to the lands of the
Lilliputians, Brobdingnagians, Laputans and Houyhnhnms.
Adam Roberts' novel Swiftly (2008) is set 120 years after Gulliver's time
and shows a world where the inhabitants of Lilliput and Blefuscu are
now slaves of the British, and the Brobdingnagians are allied to France
in a war against Britain.
Uses of characters
Gulliver
In Alan Moore's comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,
Gulliver was the unofficial leader of an early incarnation of the League
which also included The Scarlet Pimpernel, Dr. Syn and Fanny Hill.
The character of Gulliver appears in the Doctor Who story The Mind
Robber, played by Bernard Horsfall. He speaks only dialogue from the
original book (though some speeches are patched together from widely
separated sections).
The character of Gulliver is mentioned in Joy Kogawa's poem "What Do
I Remember of the Evacuation". Gulliver appears in what could be read
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as a figment of the author's imagination. However, a more profound
meaning could be determined depending on the discretion of the reader.
Lilliputians
The novel Mistress Masham's Repose (1946) by T. H. White features
descendants of Lilliputians that were captured and brought to England.
The novel Castaways in Lilliput (1958) by Henry Winterfeld is about
three normal-sized children who land in a modern version of Lilliput.
The TV series The Return of the Antelope (Granada Television) centres
around the adventures of three Lilliputian sailors shipwrecked in
England. The series was subsequently made into the stories The Return
of the Antelope (1985) and its sequels The Antelope Company Ashore
(1986) and The Antelope Company at Large (1987), all by Willis Hall.
Republished as The Secret Visitors, The Secret Visitors Take Charge,
and The Secret Visitors Fight Back.
The comic book series Fables (2002-) has a city called "Smalltown"
which was founded by self-exiled Lilliputian soldiers. All small Fables
(not just Lilliputians) have a tendency to refer to normal-sized people as
"gullivers" or as being "gulliver-sized".
In early printings of The Hobbit, hobbits are contrasted (in size) with
Lilliputians. The reference was removed in the third edition.
Houyhnhnms
In John Myers Myers novel Silverlock, the protagonist, A. Clarence
Shandon, encounters the Houyhnhnms, and is dismissed by them as a
Yahoo.
Adaptations
Literary abridgments
"A Voyage to Lilliput" was adapted for inclusion in Andrew Lang's Blue
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Fairy Book
Music
German composer Georg Philipp Telemann wrote a suite for two
violins, the "Gulliver Suite." The five movements are "Intrada,"
"Chaconne of the Lilliputians," "Gigue of the Brobdingnagians,"
"Daydreams of the Laputians and their attendant flappers," and "Loure
of the well-mannered Houyhnhnms & Wild dance of the untamed
Yahoos." Telemann wrote his suite in 1728, only two years after the
publication of Swift's novel. In recent years, an eclectic "Gulliver Suite"
was written and recorded (2008) by the Italian musician and producer
Andrea Ascolini
One of popular funk band No More Kings' most popular songs,
"Leaving Lilliput", is a retelling of Gulliver's first voyage.
In Sereno, an album by Spanish Pop singer Miguel Bosé, he has a song
in reference to Gulliver titled Gullever.
British Psychedelic Folk band The Yellow Moon Band's debut (2009)
album was titled "Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World" in
a reference to Swift's book and the ranging and eclectic mix of sounds
and influences on the album. The band's guitarist Rudy Carroll has also
commented that he lived in a house called "Lilliput" when he was a
child.
Film, Television and Radio
Gulliver's Travels has been adapted several times for film, television and
radio:
Le Voyage de Gulliver à Lilliput et chez les géants: A French short silent
adaptation directed by Georges Méliès.
The New Gulliver (1935): Russian film by Aleksandr Ptushko about a
Soviet schoolboy who dreams about ending up in Lilliput. Notable for its
intricate puppetry and a decidedly strange twisting of Swift's tale in
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favour of Communist ideas. This was the first film to contain stop
motion animation in nearly its entire running time.
Gulliver's Travels (1939): animated feature produced by Fleischer
Studios and Paramount Pictures as a response to the success of Disney's
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, directed by Dave Fleischer. The film
is generally considered one of the best from The Golden Age of
Hollywood animation, although it varies widely from the original novel.
Fleischer used the rotoscope to animate the character of Gulliver, tracing
from footage of a live actor. The film was a moderate success, and its
Lilliputian characters appeared in their own cartoon short subjects. With
the expiration of its copyright, this film has entered the public domain,
and can be downloaded at no charge from the Prelinger Archive.[7]
The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1960): The first live action adaptation of
Gulliver's Travels, but also incorporating the stop motion animation of
Ray Harryhausen (surprisingly, there is very little of this). It was
directed by Jack Sher and starred Kerwin Mathews.
The Adventures of Gulliver (1968): This animated series was directed by
William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Young Gary Gulliver, voiced by
Jerry Dexter, searches for his missing father in the land of Lilliput.
Gulliver's Travels (1977): Live action/animated musical film directed by
Peter R. Hunt and starring Richard Harris featuring the Lilliput voyage
only.
Gulliver's Travels (1979) : Animated cartoon made in Australia that was
seen on Famous Classic Tales on CBS. It starred Ross Martin as Lemuel
Gulliver and features two voyages.
Gulliver's Travels (1981): BBC Radio 3 Drama. 4 Episodes covering
each adventure, and transmitted from 4.10.1981 to 25.10.1981. Starring
Frank Finlay, William Rushton, Miriam Margolyes, Spike Milligan,
Percy Edwards and Margot Boyd.
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Gulliver in Lilliput (1982): Live-action television miniseries starring
Frank Finlay and Elisabeth Sladen. As the title suggests, only Gulliver's
trip to Lilliput is dramatised, but within that limitation the production is
quite faithful to Swift. This was produced in the UK by the BBC,
scripted and directed by Barry Letts.
Gulliver's Travels (1992): Animated television series starring the voice
of Terrence Scammell.
Gulliver's Travels (1996): Live-action television mini-series starring Ted
Danson and Mary Steenburgen. In this version Dr. Gulliver has returned
to his family from a long absence. The action shifts back and forth
between flashbacks of his travels and the present where he is telling the
story of his travels and has been committed to an asylum. It is notable
for being one of the very few adaptations to feature all four voyages,
and is considered the closest adaptation to the book despite taking
several liberties, such as Gulliver not returning home between each part
and leaving out the original children from the book for an only child
named Thomas.
"Gulliver's Travels" (1999): Radio drama adaption of Gulliver's
adventures in Lilliput, produced by the Radio Tales series for National
Public Radio.
Albhutha Dweepu (2005) A Malayalam Movie based upon Gulliver's
Travels, features Prithviraj and Mallika Kapoor in the prominent roles
besides 300 dwarfs all through the movie. This movie was later dubbed
to Tamil in 2007.
Gulliver's Travels (2007) Theatrical adaptation of all four travels.
Dramatised by Brian Wright, with music from David Stoll. Performed
by Masque Youth Theater in Northampton.
Gulliver's Travels (2008) Musical adaptation of all four travels by Chris
Chambers and Andy Rapps. Performed at The Minack Theatre,
Cornwall in 2008 by The Mitre Players.
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Gulliver's Travels (2010) Planned live-action version of Gulliver's
adventures in Lilliput, starring Jack Black, also featuring Billy Connolly,
James Corden, Amanda Peet, Chris O'Dowd [8], Catherine Tate, Jason
Segel, Emily Blunt and Olly Alexander.
Parody
A parody exists in the 2010 Chick-fil-A calendar "Great Works of Cow
Literature" in June where the novel is referred to as Bulliver's Travels.
See also
Bigendian
Brobdingnag
The Engine
Glubbdubdrib
Lemuel Gulliver
Houyhnhnm
Lagado
Laputa
Lilliput and Blefuscu
Lindalino
Struldbrug
Yahoo
References
1. ^ Gulliver's Travels: Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical and
Historical Contexts, Palgrave Macmillan 1995 (p. 21). The quote has been
misattributed to Alexander Pope, who wrote to Swift in praise of the book just a
day earlier.
2. ^ Clive Probyn, ‘Swift, Jonathan (1667–1745)’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2004)
3. ^ Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick: Volume One, Beyond Lies The
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4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
7/11/10 8:15 PM
Wub, Philip K. Dick, 1999, Millennium, an imprint of Orion Publishing Group,
London
^ The Lilliput Legion, Simon Hawke, 1989, Ace Books, New York, NY
^ Gassier, Pierre. Les Dessins de Goya: Les Albums. Fribourg: Office du Livre,
1973.
^
http://www.davyking.com/The%20Woman%20Gulliver%20Left%20Behind.pdf
^ Internet Archive: Details: Gulliver's Travels
(http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?
collection=feature_films&collectionid=gullivers_travels1939)
^ "Chris O'Dowd: The IT Man From The IT Crowd"
(http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Chris+O%27Dowd%3A+The+IT+Man+Fro
m+The+IT+Crowd/) . SuicideGirls.com. 9 May 2009.
http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Chris+O%27Dowd%3A+The+IT+Man+From
+The+IT+Crowd/. Retrieved 2009-05-11..
External links
Online Text
Gulliver's Travels (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/829) at Project
Gutenberg
Gulliver's Travels (Parts I and II) with illustrations
(http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/17157) at Project Gutenberg
Gulliver's Travels
(http://publicliterature.org/books/gullivers_travels/xaa.php) , full text and
audio.
Annotated version of Gulliver's Travels
(http://www.jaffebros.com/lee/gulliver/index.html)
RSS edition (http://rss.duchs.com/swift/gullivers-travels/) of the text
Searchable version in multiple formats
(http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift/sisu_manifest.html)
( html
(http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift/toc.html) ,
XML, opendocument ODF
(http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift/opendocument.odt)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver's_Travels#Major_themes
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, pdf (landscape
(http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift/landscape.pdf)
, portrait
(http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift/portrait.pdf)
), plaintext
(http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift/plain.txt) ,
concordance
(http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/gullivers_travels.jonathan_swift/concordance.html)
) SiSU
Film
Le Voyage de Gulliver à Lilliput et chez les géants
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0229024/) at the Internet Movie Database
Novyj Gulliver (1935) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026793/) at the
Internet Movie Database
Gulliver's Travels (1939) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031397/) at the
Internet Movie Database
Gulliver's Travels (1939) (http://www.archive.org/movies/moviesdetails-db.php?
collection=feature_films&collectionid=gullivers_travels1939&from=BA)
— The full feature film available for download at the Internet
Archive (http://www.archive.org)
The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053882/) at the
Internet Movie Database
Gulliver's Travels (1977) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076119/) at the
Internet Movie Database
Gulliver in Lilliput (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083426/) at the
Internet Movie Database
Gulliver's Travels (TV series) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103433/) at
the Internet Movie Database
Gulliver's Travels (1996)(TV)(Mini-series)
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115195/) at the Internet Movie Database
Arpudha Theevu (2007) Tamil Movie based upon Gulliver's Travels
(http://www.indiaglitz.com/channels/tamil/review/7674.html)
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Other Information
Gulliver's Travels: The Antithetical Structure
(http://www.geocities.com/seo_advice/gullivers_travels.html)
The Gulliver Code - Gulliver's Secret Deciphered, by Alastair Sweeny
(http://www.gullivercode.com/wiki/index.php)
Armagh Public Library: Home to the original Gulliver's travels
(http://www.armaghrobinsonlibrary.org)
Gulliver's Travels: a Study Guide for Students
(http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Gulliver.html#Top)
Gulliver's Travels (http://www.shmoop.com/gullivers-travels/) study
guide, themes, quotes, teacher resources
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels"
Categories: Works by Jonathan Swift | 1726 novels | Satirical novels |
Philosophical novels | Science fiction novels | Gulliver's Travels |
Metafictional works | Novels adapted into films | Fantasy novels
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