-Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift is best known for his creative and incisive satire against English and Irish society and politics. This work, Gulliver’s Travels, was inspired by François Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel and meant to parody early 18^th century travel books. Purporting to be a travelogue written by Captain Lemuel Gulliver, Swift describes numerous imaginary places that each critique some aspect of the world. The most well known is Lilliput, an island in the Indian Ocean inhabited by tiny people approximately six inches tall. These inhabitants have correspondingly minor concerns such as a civil war fought over which end of an egg to break. The people of Lilliput are contrasted by the giant people of Brobdingnag, a peninsula located on the Californian coast, who are politically and educationally simple. In a critique of humanity’s perceived rationality compared to the natural world, Houyhnhnms Land is inhabited by intelligent talking horses and uncivilized humans called Yahoos, the etymological origin of the modern word. 

Gulliver also visits the floating island of Laputa, which hovers over the island of Balnibarbi. The Laputan people are interested in music, mathematics, and astronomy to the exclusion of more practical pursuits. This interest in astronomy includes the discovery of two Martian moons well before Mars’ real moons, Phobos and Deimos, were discovered in 1877. Features on Phobos are now named after locations from Gulliver’s Travels. Balnibarbians are imagined as impoverished subjects of Laputa, obsessed with foolish scientific projects like the extraction of sunbeams from cucumbers. Swift intended this work to be a counterpoint to political philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, who believed in materialism and people existing in a state of nature outside of society. Gulliver’s Travels became a staple among children’s literature, focusing on the whimsical adventures and leaving out the more complex satirical sections. It has been adapted into numerous films and television shows, which has helped Gulliver remain relevant.