Does "Gulliver's Travels" provides a Critical and Insightful Framework Relevant still Today?

[xMathFanx]

Does "Gulliver's Travels" provides a Critical and Insightful Framework Relevant still Today?

Does "Gulliver's Travels" provides a Critical and Insightful Framework Relevant still Today?

Authored by Johnathon Swift, originally published in 1726.

"Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people, whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters - with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the philosophical Houyhnhnms and the brutish Yahoos - give Gulliver new, bitter insights into human behaviour. Swift's savage satire view mankind in a distorted hall of mirrors as a diminished, magnified and finally bestial species, presenting us with an uncompromising reflection of ourselves." -Goodreads.com

A. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7keAFXcVMv8
B. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1YR77K26WA

 

[ashurbanipal]

Re: Does "Gulliver's Travels" provides a Critical and Insightful Framework Relevant still Today?

Swift was fighting a common definition of human beings popular during the enlightenment, which had it that human beings are rational animals. Swift's view was that human beings should instead be understood as animals capable of rationality. Gulliver's Travels was meant to help establish this thesis.

 

[Goshin]

Re: Does "Gulliver's Travels" provides a Critical and Insightful Framework Relevant still Today?

It remains a classic, but is somewhat dated; a lot of things would probably not be as readily understood by the modern reader as by a reader of Swift's own time.


Going from memory on this as its been a long time....

 

[Soopairik]

Re: Does "Gulliver's Travels" provides a Critical and Insightful Framework Relevant still Today?

It sure does. Good old classic.