Swift’s Travels beyond Children’s Literature: A Generic Study of Gulliver’s Travels

• Main Authors: I-Ting Lee, 李宜庭
• Other Authors: 董崇選
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/22087380089955945417

碩士 === 中興大學 === 外國語文學系所 === 99 === This thesis is a generic study of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. It aims to point out that Gulliver’s Travels is a unique example of Swift’s swift shift from children’s literature to satire, that is, from a children’s genre to an adults’ genre. In the introductory chapter, Swift’s life and works are briefly mentioned. Noted particularly are the facts, among others, that Swift seems to lack a memorable childhood, that he traveled constantly between Ireland and England and got involved in the political and religious affairs of the two nations, and that his greatest achievement lies in his writing, especially in his prose satire as seen in Gulliver’s Travels. The second chapter defines children’s literature, discusses its subgenres, and enumerates its characteristics, besides defining satire, discussing its types, and considering its characteristic contrasts with children’s literature. Based on the greatest contrasts, that is, the fanciful content and the playful tone of children’s literature versus the factual content and the painful tone of satire, the third chapter provides a detailed discussion of Gulliver’s four voyages to the “wonderlands.” In the fourth chapter, then, the focus is on how Swift “travels” beyond children’s literature. Four adaptations of Swift’s original Gulliver’s Travels are introduced: the Longman Edition, the Macmillan/Bookman Edition, the Oxford Edition, and the Penguin Edition. Such adaptations are all simplified and abridged versions intended for children. They reveal Swift’s potential for children’s literature. They also show Swift’s swift shift from the potential to his talented genre, satire. The thesis concludes in the fifth chapter that Gulliver’s Travels demonstrates Swift’s uniqueness in the postmodern tendency towards “hibridity”: he succeeds in making Gulliver’s Travels a great hybrid, combining the fantastic and amusing in children’s literature with the factual and instructive in adults’ literature. That is why the work is more popular than Robinson Crusoe and Candide.