Hardcover, 272 pages
English language
Published Feb. 24, 1954 by Junior Deluxe Editions.
The voyages of an Englishman carry him to such strange places as Lilliput, a land of people six inches high, Brobdingnag, a land of giants, and Glubbdubdrib, an island of sorcerers.
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.
