Swift, Jonathan: Gulliver's Travels - William A. Eddy (essay date 1923)
William A. Eddy (essay date 1923)
SOURCE: "Didactic Content of the 'Philosophic Voyage,'" in Gulliver's Travels: A Critical Study, Russell & Russell, 1963, pp. 40-50.
[In the essay below, first published in 1923 and reprinted in 1963, Eddy focuses on Swift's satiric, pessimistic, and misanthropic views in arguing the superiority of Gulliver's Travels over other contemporaneous texts employing the "voyage" motif]
Turning now from the story form of the Philosophic Voyage and from its interest as a romantic tale, let us examine the author's purpose in writing. In its fully developed form the Philosophic Voyage was always a vehicle for ideas, never an end in itself. Swift's avowed aim in writing Gulliver was "to vex, not to divert, the world"(1). The survey of the motives, satiric and philosophic, which run through the fore-runners of Gulliver must be here very brief. The four Voyages of...
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