学期论文之英美文学格列佛游记——斯威夫特讽刺之作.doc

本文档系作者精心整理编辑，实用价值高。山 东 经 济 学 院英美文学学期论文格列佛游记斯威夫特讽刺之作学期论文题目: _ 指导教师： 学 号： 姓 名： 外国语学院（部）英语 专业 2012 届山东xxxxx教务处制2011年04月20日Gullivers TravelsSwifts Moral SatireByxxxxxSubmitted to School of Foreign Languagesin Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for theTerm PaperFor British and American LiteratureatShandong Economic UniversityUnder the Supervision of Zhang LindongApr. 20, 2011本文档系作者精心整理编辑，如有需要，可查看作者文库其他文档。本文档系作者精心整理编辑，实用价值高。Gullivers TravelsSwifts Moral Satire ABSTRACTThis paper consists of four chapters. The first and second chapters are voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag, which mainly focus on criticism of various aspects of English society at the time and man within this society; while chapter three and four are voyages to Laputa and the Country of the Houyhnhnms，which are more preoccupied with human nature itself, (Downie, 281).Keywords:voyages; criticism; English society; human nature格列佛游记斯威夫特讽刺之作摘要本文共分为四章。第一、二章格列佛到利立浦特（小人国）和布罗布丁奈格（巨人国）的旅行，作者借此讽刺了当时英国的不同层面和社会当中的人们；第三四章主要介绍了主人公在拉皮他（飞岛国）和慧骃国的经历，作者在这两章主要反思了当时的人性之恶。关键词：航海旅行；批评；英国社会；人性 本文档系作者精心整理编辑，如有需要，可查看作者文库其他文档。 IntroductionIt is uncertain exactly when Swift started composing Gullivers Travels, but some people suggest as early as 1713 when Swift, Gay, Pope and others formed the Scriblerus Club.Some people said that the composition began in 1720 with the mirror-themed parts I and II written first, Part IV next in 1723 and Part III written in 1724. By August 1725 the book was completed. In March 1726 Swift made a visit to London to have his work published; the manuscript was secretly delivered to the publisher Benjamin Motte, who used five printing houses to speed up production and avoid piracy. The author touches on different themes in different chapters, actually, all these elements overlap each other, and with each voyage, Gulliver, and thus the reader, begin to have their own views of human nature that climax in Gullivers epiphany when he compares himself with Yahoos. This book is also like a spiral leading to our self-realization. Tuveson holds that Swifts satire shifts from foreign to domestic scenes, from institutions to individuals, from mankind to man, from others to ourselves, (62).Chapter one :A Voyage to Lilliput4May 1699 13 April 1702The book begins a brief outline of Gullivers life and history prior to his voyages. He enjoys travelling, although it is that love of travel that is his downfall.On his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore by a storm. After he awakes, only to find himself a prisoner of a race of people one-twelfth the size of normal human beings, less than 6inches high. They are inhabitants of the neighbouring and rival countries of Lilliput and Blefuscu. After giving his word of good behaviour, he is permmittied to live in Lilliput and becomes a craze of the court. From there, the book follows Gullivers observations on the Court of Lilliput. He is also given the permission to walk around the city on condition that he does not harm the citizens and their possesions. Gulliver also helps the Lilliputians to defeat their neighbours-the Blefuscudians-by stealing their fleet. However, he refuses to reduce the country to a province of Lilliput, raging the King and the court. When Gulliver is accused of treason and sentenced to be blinded, with the help of a kind friend, he escapes to Blefuscu. Tthe local people help him to find a broken ship and repair it,then he escaped. At last he is rescued by a passing ship which safely takes him back home. As a satire, the main purpose of Gullivers Travels is to show certain shortcomings in 18th century English society. (151). Much of the first voyage satirizes court intrigue and the arbitrary fickleness of court favor, (Eddy, 110). The rank and status of the Lilliputian officers being dependent on how high they can jump over a rope literally elucidates this figurative point. Gulliver himself falls out of favor because he does not satisfy the Kings desire for power. The two political parties being differentiated by the height of their heels points out how little substantive difference there was between Whig and Tory. Swift also eulogizes the pretensions of politics by informing the reader of some of the heinous and novel ideals and practices of Lilliputian society such as rewarding those who obey the law, holding a breach of trust as the highest offense, and punishing false accusors and ingratitude, but shows that, like humans, even the Lilliputians do not live up to their own standards when they exhibit ingratitude for Gullivers help and accuse him of high treason, (Downie, 278). Chapter Two:A Voyage to Brobdingnag20 June 1702 3 June 1706In this adventure, Gulliver is abandoned by his companions when they find a giant man chasing after them, he then is found by a farmer who is 72feet (22m) tall. He brings Gulliver home and his daughter takes after Gulliver carefully. The farmer treats him as a stunner and exhibits him for money. The word is let out and the Queen of Brobdingnag wants to see him. She loves Gulliver very much 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 orders her man to create a small house for Gulliver so that he can be carried around in it, which is referred to as his travelling box. During some 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 Gullivers accounts of Europe, especially upon learning of the usage of guns and cannons. On a trip to the seaside, his travelling box is grabbed by an eagle which drops Gulliver and his box right into the sea where he is picked up by some sailors, who take him to England. In this section, Gulliver finds himself in the same relation to the Brobdingnagians as the Lilliputians were to him, which not only leads to some different kinds of satiric insights, but many are sightly darker in tone. Most of the social and political criticism occurs in Chapters six and seven. Gulliver make a desrription of European civilization to Brobdingnags King, including Englands political and legal institutions and how they work, as well as some of the personal habits of the ruling class. Yet, even though Gulliver subsequently confesses to the reader that he cast this information in the most favorable light, the King still believes that every class of society and political power is infested with rampant corruption and dismissively concludes 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. This echoes a basic message of the first voyage but the attack here is more direct and stronger. Also, all the transactions of life, all passion, and all social amenities, which involve the body, lose their respectability in Brobdingnag, (Eddy, 150), from Gullivers description of the odious breast to his viewing of a public execution. In contrast, Brobdingnagian society has many things to boast such as excellence in morality, history, poetry, and mathematics,. Actually, much of Swifts political writings indicate that he, like the Brobdingnagians, support a conception of government and society based on common-sense, (Lock, 132-134). The most crucial criticism of European civilization occurs in Chapter seven when, after Gullivers offering the secret of gun powder to the King and his subsequent horrified refusal, Gulliver declares the King to possess narrow principles and short views! Of course, mankind would never be so short-sighted as to turn away from learning a new method of injuring, torturing, or killing ones fellows! Aside from this sharp comment on human nature, Swift is also alluding to the eagerness with which European nations would leap at such an offer as an aid to waging war against their neighbors.Chapter Three:A Voyage to Laputa5August 1706 16 April 1710After Gullivers ship is attacked by pirates, he is washed close to a desolate rocky island, near India. Fortunately, he is rescued by the flying island of Laputa, a kingdom devoted to arts of music and mathematics but unable to use them in practice. In Lapuat, he travles 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 bureaucracy and the Royal Society and its experiments. At The Grand Academy of Lagado great resources and manpower are employed on researching completely ridiculous and unnecessary schemes such as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, softening marble for use in pillows, learning how to mix paint by smell, and uncovering political conspiracies by examining the excrement of suspicious persons.The main focus of social criticism in the voyage to Laputa is on intellectuals, such as scholars, philosophers, and scientists, who often get lost in theoretical abstractions and conceptions to the exclusion of the more pragmatic aspects of life, in direct contrast to the practical Brobdingnagians. Many critics hold Swift was satirizing the strange experiments of the scientists of the Royal Society, but may also have been warning his readers against the political projectors and speculators of the time, (Davis 149-150). The Laputians are good at theoretical mathematics, but they are not able to build houses where the walls are straight and the corners are square. Instead, they always worry about when the sun will burn out and whether a comet will collide with the earth. This misuse of reason is hilariously elaborated on in Chapters five and six, where the various experiments occuring at the Grand Academy of Lagado are described. Of course, the point is highlighted as Gulliver professes his sincere admiration for such projects as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers and building houses from the roof down. The satire in Voyage three attacks both the deficiency of common sense and the consequences of corrupt judgment (Quintana, 317). Chapter Four: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms 7 September 1710 2 July 1715Gulliver returns to the sea as the captain of a merchantman as he is bored with 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. He has great conflicts whitn them and is abandoned in a landing boat and comes across some creatures like humanbings,but violent and uncivilized. Thereafter he meets a horse and comes to understand that they call themselves Houyhnhms (which in their language means the perfection of nature), and that they are the rulers, while the creatures called Yahoos are human beings in their base form.Gulliver soon becomes a member of the horses household, and begins to admire and imitate the Houyhnhnms and their lifestyle, rejecting his fellow humans as merely Yahoos endowed with some semblance of reason which they only use to deteriorate and add to the vices Nature gave them. After hearing his description of his courtry, an Assembly of the Houyhnhnms believes that Gulliver is also a Yahoo with some semblance of reason, a danger to their civilization, and expels him.He is then rescued 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, but he is unable to reconcile himself to living among Yahoos and becomes crazy, staying in his house, strongly avoiding his family and his wife, and spending several hours a day speaking with the horses in his stables. Most of the criticism in the Voyage to the Houyhnhnms is directed at human nature itself, he cited some exaples such as war, (destruction clothed in the pretext of valour and patriotism), lawyers, (social parasites who measure their worth by their excellence at deception and therefore, actually inhibit justice), and money, (the greed of a few is fed by the labor and poverty of the many, as well as the relative uselessness and corruption of these priveleged few). In addition, Swift makes some very persuative observations on imperialism in the concluding chapter which point out the arrogance and self deception of European nations Of course, as Swift implies, the real goal of imperialism is greed. The most ironic point occurs when the author disclaims that this attack on imperialist countries does not include Britain, which history shows was equally as brutal as its European rivals and, in many cases, even more so, considering its Empire became at one time the largest of any European country. What I found most interesting was how many critics took this disclaimer seriously as an expression of the authors patriotism, (Ewald, 143-144, Bullitt, 64). It seems obvious that Swift is making the point that Gullivers naive patriotism, the last remnant of identification he has with his own kind, is misplaced and it is Swifts final, palpable hit. Conclusion For many critics, Gullivers Travels isin a sense, a tragic work in that it is the picture of mans collapse before his corrupt nature, and of his defiance in face of the collapse (Dobree, 447). Obvi