Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (2022, Independently Published)
English language
Published Sept. 28, 2022 by Independently Published.
For the last 250 years people everywhere have enjoyed reading about Lemuel Gulliver's travels in the strange countries of Lilliput and Brobdingnag. The people of these countries, with all their curiously human failings, come to life in vivid illustrations. Here is a story to make you laugh - but to make you think, too.--GOODREADS
Lemuel Gulliver always dreamed of traveling the world. But when a violent storm claims his ship and casts him adrift among uncharted lands, he is taken to places that he could not even dream of. Traveling to the nation of Lilliput, where the inhabitants measure just centimeters tall, and to Brobdingnag, where they tower into the sky like giants, Gulliver voyages to an island floating above the clouds, visits a race of immortals, and finds himself stranded in a land ruled by horses.
Face to face with warring armies and power-hungry kings, each new journey …
For the last 250 years people everywhere have enjoyed reading about Lemuel Gulliver's travels in the strange countries of Lilliput and Brobdingnag. The people of these countries, with all their curiously human failings, come to life in vivid illustrations. Here is a story to make you laugh - but to make you think, too.--GOODREADS
Lemuel Gulliver always dreamed of traveling the world. But when a violent storm claims his ship and casts him adrift among uncharted lands, he is taken to places that he could not even dream of. Traveling to the nation of Lilliput, where the inhabitants measure just centimeters tall, and to Brobdingnag, where they tower into the sky like giants, Gulliver voyages to an island floating above the clouds, visits a race of immortals, and finds himself stranded in a land ruled by horses.
Face to face with warring armies and power-hungry kings, each new journey makes Gulliver more desperate to find a way back home. But once he discovers the truth about his own land and himself, returning home becomes the last thing he desires. Written by world-renowned satirist, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver s Travels is one of the most gripping and poignant adventures ever told.--FictionDB
Officially titled Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships, Gulliver's Travels is the story of the travels of Lemuel Gulliver, to such exotic places as Lilliput and Brobdingnag.
GOODREADS REVIEWS:
Lisa (Jun 27, 2014) rated it 5 of 5 Stars - it was amazing Shelves: favorites, 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die "And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together."
I don't think there will ever be a time when Gulliver's Travels doesn't feel like a perfect mirror of humankind. I remember the first time I read it, as a child. I was immeasurably impressed with the sudden insight that things are small or great depending on comparison with other things, and that there are no absolute values. That knowledge, combined with the idea that you learn to understand yourself by seeing your peculiarities through the eyes of people who do not share your social and cultural background, helped me navigate my globetrotting childhood. When I reread the Travels as a grown-up, I focused more on the political satire, finding pleasure in discovering that the typical idiocies of my own time apparently had their correspondences centuries ago. Somehow, that made life easier to bear.
But now I am beginning to wonder. Are the yahoos degenerating further? When will they hit rock bottom? And could we maybe ship off some of our worst yahoos to Lilliput, where they can claim they are great without lying?
Thank Goodness there are authors like Swift, who are capable of making humanists in despair laugh on dark November nights after reading the never-ending misery called news. Oh Lordy, I wish they were fake.
But they are likely to mirror the world - without the wit and irony that Swift added to make life endurable, enjoyable even! That is a quality in an author that is always needed, now more than ever! Yahooooooooooooo!
Matthew (Jan 08, 2013) rated it 5 of 5 Stars - it was amazing: Shelves: favorites, fantasy, classic, required-reading-high-school This was my favorite required reading in high school (well, actually, probably tied with Animal Farm). It was a very pleasant and unexpected surprise. The reference points I had were cartoon re-telling of this from my youth. I only really had an image of Gulliver vs the Lilliputians - and that was only the most basic "giant in a land full of very small people" story-lines (well, they were trying to entertain children, so it doesn't have to get much more complex than that).
But, the book is made up of more stories than just Gulliver as a giant (hence the Travels - plural). The content of these stories is witty and not-so-thinly veiled political and social commentary. In the end, it didn't feel like required reading at all - it was a truly enjoyable adventure I was glad to take!
Interesting characters but most of them are not relatable or likeable. Granted, I haven't read the previous books. I love Bloom though. I give this one a 3.5 plus a lil extra for that freakin cover model, goodness gracious.
Disfruté mucho de la relectura de esta novela, después de tantos años.
Decía Borges que la caracterización de Swift como un escritor para niños, basada sola y exclusivamente en el caracter adorable de los liliputienses en la primera parte de la novela, fue una estrategia de la crítica posterior para desviar la atención de la mordaz sátira de la historia y políticas europeas que la novela encarna.
Escrito en los albores del expansionismo británico, cuando el poder global aún estaba en manos de España (Laputa) y el Europa estaba rodeada de regiones desconocidas, la novela critica lo que en los siglos siguientes sería la justificación de la expansión colonialista: la supuesta superioridad cultural del capitalismo liberal y de la monarquía constitucional europea.
Leímos "Los viajes de Gulliver" en las ediciones número 61 a 63 de nuestro Club de #LecturaMastodontica
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It was quite a nice book to read. It is a satire, though I am quite sure that I did not notice everything. Actually, if it weren't for the introduction and notes, I would not have recognized a lot of things. But that is probably logical, since there are more notes than pages...
I read this book in elementary school; I was a very pretentious child, I guess, and it was laying around the house, so I read it over the course of a few weeks. A lot passed over my head but I enjoyed what I did understand. Reread it years later and got a lot more, and still enjoyed it, understanding now that the horses were not intended to be emulated as the benevolent individuals they portrayed themselves as being.
As broad and engaging a satirical adventure as any would expect. Swift is a master of acrid digs at his particular epoch. Great diversion.
I'm glad that I read this, but it was a bit of a slog by the second half. The story is divided into 4 parts. The first two are the ones that everyone is familiar with: the lands of the little people and the big people (Lilliput and Brobdingnag). These were the most interesting. The third land Gulliver visits is Laputa, the floating island of musicians and mathematicians who can't do anything practical with their knowledge. The last land is the country of the Houyhnhnms, horse people with no understanding of the concept of lying, war, or disease.
What you may not know is that between these visits he returns home to his wife and family, and then opts to once again go to sea. While he is home he tells people about his trips too. Knowing how superstitious sailors were, I can't imagine any of them having Gulliver on …
I'm glad that I read this, but it was a bit of a slog by the second half. The story is divided into 4 parts. The first two are the ones that everyone is familiar with: the lands of the little people and the big people (Lilliput and Brobdingnag). These were the most interesting. The third land Gulliver visits is Laputa, the floating island of musicians and mathematicians who can't do anything practical with their knowledge. The last land is the country of the Houyhnhnms, horse people with no understanding of the concept of lying, war, or disease.
What you may not know is that between these visits he returns home to his wife and family, and then opts to once again go to sea. While he is home he tells people about his trips too. Knowing how superstitious sailors were, I can't imagine any of them having Gulliver on their ship. The real kicker is the forth voyage, where Gulliver is the CAPTAIN?!? Who was dumb enough to give this man a ship?!? Granted he wasn't shipwrecked the last time, his crew mutinied and abandoned him on an unknown island!!
If I was Gulliver, after the first time I was shipwrecked on a weird land, sure, maybe I'd try my luck a second time. But a third and forth time?!? Really?!? What point does one need to reach before giving up on ever successfully completing an ocean voyage?
I also did not realize that this story was as much satire as it was a fantastic story. It was written to make fun of both travel logs of the time and also of his society as a whole. By the end of the book, Gulliver, after living with these nearly perfect horses, can't even stand the company of his family.
I get what Swift was doing, but it's really hard to appreciate almost 300 years later. I haven't read travel logs from the early 1700's, and the satire of his own society was terribly heavy handed, especially at the end.
