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An Ecocritical Reading of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels
Abstract
Numerous critics have studied Jonathan Swift's use of animals as satirical tools in Gulliver's Travels. However, none has devoted sufficient attention to Swift's forerunning "ecocritical" concern with animal issues in relation to humans. Although the animal theme in Gulliver's Travels does involve satirical intentions, this paper aims at showing that it has more profound implications that manifest Swift's forward-looking ideas regarding the relation between humans and their natural environment, as represented in the human-animal relationship. The ethical stand and moral commitment to the natural world represented by animals, and the care for making the themes of a literary work a means to create connections between man and the natural environment around him, are basic ecocritical values that Swift stresses both explicitly and implicitly throughout the novel.
... We took the advice gleaned from our readings about doing ecocriticism particularly the importance of slow reading and the need for a fluid approach to ecocritical reading. We were also guided by work done over the years that describe a number of such analyses done on various pieces of writing (for example, Bland and Strotmann 2014;Deyab 2011;Tan 2019;Yan 2011. We began by examining the texts prescribed in the current CSEC English B syllabus for the years June 2018-January 2027 (CXC 2018b). ...
An examination of school curriculum documents which guide teaching
in Caribbean schools indicate that while some efforts have been made
to infuse ESE into some subjects, very little progress has been made in
incorporating it into the teaching of English. One pedagogical technique
to address this situation is ecocriticism. The authors conducted ecocritical
analyses of two selections of West Indian prose: For the Life of Laetitia
(Hodge 1993) and Breath, Eyes, Memory (Danticat 1994), from the current
CSEC English Literature syllabus to unearth the ESE themes in these
works and the implications of such analyses for the teaching of ESE. In
addition to the conclusion that both prose selections contain ample
opportunities for the teaching of ESE within the specific subject, the
study indicates that within anglophone Caribbean literature a palpable
richness exists that can deepen environmental and sustainability education more broadly. Pedagogical and curricular implications along with
practical advice for doing ecocritical readings are discussed.
... A wider variety of environmental studies focusing primarily on other topics have acknowledged the important role of humor. For example, irony, parody, and satire can be found in advertisements in the context of climate change (Linder 2006), the skiing industry in a warming climate (Stoddard 2011), transportation cartoons addressing environmental issues (Salomon and Singer 2010) or representations of relations between humans and their natural environment (Deyab 2011). Some scholars have used irony just as a notion illustrating the relationship between ambitious goals of environmental policies and less ambitious practices (Entwistle 1998). ...
How can humor illustrate critical trends related to social, economic, and ecological sustainability? This article is based on a case study that focused on the film Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) and two related short films-Rare Exports Inc. (2003) and Rare Exports: Official Safety Instructions (2005). These fantasy films employ irony and dark humor that reverse the popular impressions related to Santa Claus and his elves and, more generally, exotic northern nature and culture. By representing the gentle Santa Claus as a savage hybrid creature brutally punishing those not adhering to certain social norms, these films break several conventional dichotomies between good and evil, human and animal, and society and nature. The use of dark humor and irony may compromise attempts to create public understanding based on best available scientific knowledge, but it also opens up complementary and potentially fruitful ways to discuss sustainability issues. Irony provides opportunities to identify and criticize unsustainable trends and to challenge and disclose dichotomies that may otherwise remain unnoticed.
The Routledge Handbook of Ecofeminism and Literature explores the interplay between the domination of nature and the oppression of women, as well as liberatory alternatives, bringing together essays from leading academics in the field to facilitate cutting-edge critical readings of literature. Covering the main theoretical approaches and key literary genres of the area, this volume includes:
- Examination of ecofeminism through the literatures of a diverse sampling of languages, including Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish; native speakers of Tamil, Vietnamese, Turkish, Slovene, and Icelandic
- Analysis of core issues and topics, offering innovative approaches to interpreting literature, including: activism, animal studies, cultural studies, disability, gender essentialism, hegemonic masculinity, intersectionality, material ecocriticism, postcolonialism, posthumanism, postmodernism, race, and sentimental ecology
- Surveys key periods and genres of ecofeminism and literary criticism, including chapters on Gothic, Romantic, and Victorian literatures, children and young adult literature, mystery, and detective fictions, including interconnected genres of climate fiction, science fiction, and fantasy, and distinctive perspectives provided by travel writing, autobiography, and poetry
This collection explores how each of ecofeminism’s core concerns can foster a more emancipatory literary theory and criticism, now and in the future. This comprehensive volume will be of great interest to scholars and students of literature, ecofeminism, ecocriticism, gender studies, and the environmental humanities.
Gulliver's Travels is written by Seventeenth century Anglo-Irish prose writer Jonathan Swift. Jonathan swift employed literary device called invective, satire in his writing to cure social malaise of seventeenth century society. Gulliver's travels are a political allegory in which seventeenth century society is highlighted in many aspects. There is a character called Lemuel Gulliver which is enterprising and adventurous underwent a voyage to Lilliput. The author gives some account of himself and family. His first inducement to travel. He is shipwrecked and swims for his life gets safe on shore in the country of Lilliput is made prisoner and carried up the country. The emperor of Lilliput attended by several of the nobility, come to see the author in his confinement. The Emperor's person and habit described. Learned men appointed to teach the author the language. He gains favor by his mild disposition. His pockets are searched and his sword & pistols taken from him.
Gulliver’s Travels (1726), by Jonathan Swift, is one of the classics of English literature, a biting satire of English customs and politics in particular and of human foibles in general. While literary scholars have traditionally agreed that, in Part IV of Gulliver’s Travels, Swift uses his elegant anthropomorphic horses and his filthy human-like Yahoos to reflect on society and human nature, some recent studies highlight Swift’s ecocritical concern with animal issues, focusing on how the behaviour of the noble horses challenges the conventional hierarchies of the anthropocentric view of the world and anticipates values that are prominent in today’s society. However, this article aims to show that what has traditionally challenged and disturbed readers, publishers and critics for many years is the presence of the other race of the animal world, the Yahoos. Analysing the reception of Gulliver’s journey to the land of the Houyhnhnms helps understand how Swift’s early ecocritical ideas disturbed publishers and translators, who often rejected or modified the text, particularly those passages in which the filthy human-like Yahoos show their harsh and scatological behaviour.
Morality's Progress is the summation of nearly three decades of work by a leading figure in environmental ethics and bioethics. The twenty-two papers here are invigoratingly diverse, but together tell a unified story about various aspects of the morality of our relationships to animals and to nature. Jamieson's direct and accessible essays will convince sceptics that thinking about these relations offers great intellectual reward, and his work here sets a challenging, controversial agenda for the future.
This book offers a new paradigm for reading and appreciating animals in literature and addresses how human culture views animals in poetry. Part one sets up a theoretical overview and posits some aesthetic and ethical ideals for transposing animals into art, while part two presents a more focused practical application of these ideals in one strain of animal poetry (as seen in the works of Marianne Moore, José Emilio Pacheco, Gary Snyder, Pattiann Rogers and others). The poetry analyzed in the book is respectfully and non-invasively insightful into animals; it is tinged with a distancing, and a kind of spiritual awe, regarding their existence.
This essay offers ecocritical discussions of animals in Shakespeare, in the spirit of the activist goals that ecocriticism cherishes. Balancing close readings with theory, the essay suggests reasons why animals have remained on the fringes of environmentalist and ecocritical discussions, and it brings animals into the discussion in viable theoretical ways.