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Swift, Jonathan

Gulliver’s Travels, [50] 19

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20160601170002 Willy Pogany, The Struldbruggs - Robin Blake on Gulliver's Travels

Travelling with Swift

Robin Blake on Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

Among quite a few things Gulliver’s Travels has in common with Alice in Wonderland, one in particular would have surprised their authors: each jumped nimbly across the boundary of their assumed readership. But they did so from different sides of the fence. Carroll’s child’s fantasy, spun during a picnic afternoon on the river, generated an entire academic industry for serious-minded adults; Swift, on the other hand, had ground out a bitter, hard-hitting satire on bad government, intellectual pretension and moral hubris, only to have it co-opted by children in their fascination for little people and giants.

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