Jonathan Swift

(1667-1745)
• Born in Dublin, Ireland -Posthumous Child

• Father died, mother left

• suffered from poverty
• Education Kilkenny Grammar School
• 1682-86 Trinity College in Dublin
• 1689 went to England : Hoped to gain
preferment in the Anglican Church
worked for Sir William Temple
met Esther Johnson – “Stella”
• began to suffer from Meniere’s Disease
• got a M.A. degree from Oxford
Satires: Other:
A Tale of a Tub The Journal to Stella
The Battle of the Books Also wrote many sermons,
A Modest Proposal prayers, etc.

A Meditation Upon a Broom-Stick

Gulliver’s travels
Pamphlets:
The Abolishing of the Christianity in
England
On the conduct of the allies
The Barrier Treaty
The Public Spirit of the Whigs
Poems:
A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed
Cadenus and Vanessa
A Description of a City Shower
 Gulliver’s travels
Part 1 – A Voyage to Lilliput
Part 2 – A Voyage to Brobdingnag
Part 3 – A Voyage to Laputa,
Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib,
Luggnagg, and Japan
Part 4 – A Voyage to the Country of
the Houyhnhnms

Gulliver's Travels is the story of

Lemuel Gulliver and his voyages
around the world. Prefaced by two
letters attesting to the truth of the
tales, the adventures are told by
Gulliver after his return home from
his final journey.
 Introduction to Gulliver’s Travels
• Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan’s best fictional work, was
published in 1726, under the title of Travels into Several
Remote Nations of the World, by Samuel Gulliver. The book
contains four parts, each dealing with one particular voyage
during which Gulliver meets with extraordinary adventures
on some remote island after he has met with shipwreck of
piracy of some other misfortune.
 Part 2

Part 3

Part 1

Part 4
 Introduction to Part 3
• The third part deals with mainly with his accidental
visit to the flying Island, where the philosophers and
projectors devote all their time and energy to the
study of some absurd problems. Their scientists are
engaged in projects for exacting sunbeams out of
cucumbers, turning ice into gunpowder and making
cloth from cobweb. It is a parody on scholastics and
projectors.
The part that we are
focusing on is …..

Part 4
 Part 4
• The last part is a most interesting account of his
discoveries in the Houyhnhnm land, where horses are
endowed with reason and all good and admirable
qualities, and are the governing class.
• Contrary to the Houyhnhnms, the Yahoos possess every
conceivable evil. They are malicious, spiteful, envious,
unclean and greedy. Gulliver admires the life and ways
of the horses, as much as he is disgusted with the
Yahoos, whose relations remind him of those existing
in English society to such a degree that he shudders at
the prospect of returning to his native.
Land of the Houyhnhnms
• Part four:
Gulliver is most
affected by his final
journey.

He loves the
houyhnhnms and
wishes to stay with
them, but he
cannot.
 Houyhnhnms
• Houyhnhnms are a race of intelligent horses
described in book four of Gulliver’s Travels
• Contrasts against the Yahoos who are savage
creatures, and represent all that is bad of the human
race
The Houyhnhnms are clever, peaceful
and trustworthy.

But they are passionless and dull.

In the end human beings are somewhere

between Houyhnhnms and Yahoos.
The Houyhnhnms share their country with a race
of wild, stupid, filthy creatures called Yahoos.

To The Houyhnhnms Gulliver looks like a

Yahoo.

When Gulliver returns to England at the end of

the book, he cannot bear to be around people or
look in the mirror, he is so horrified by the
human race.
 Yahoos
• Gulliver describes them to be very
savage-like, ugly, and unpleasant.
• They live in servile to the
Houyhnhnms.
• They are beasts that look like
humans.
• Gulliver describes them to be very
savage-like, ugly, and unpleasant
• Gulliver despises the Yahoos. He
hates that the Houyhnhnms mistake
him as a Yahoo because they are
similar in some ways
• At the end, Gulliver finally comes to
realize that he is actually a lot like
the Yahoos
Gulliver at the end of the story…
By the end of the book, Gulliver has
basically been driven mad.

He cannot bear to look at his wife and

family.

He buys some horses and spends his time

talking to them.
Thank
you! :)