Verisimilitude is the emphasis on realistic detail and character development that science fiction writers (for example) use in world building in order to create fantastic worlds or situations that are believable to their audiences. Both Defoe and Swift are writing fantastic stories, and both rely on verisimilitude to make them believable. Both wrote in the genre of travel fiction; as exploration and colonization of non-European areas took off, the public was exceptionally eager to hear about how other people lived, and both Defoe and Swift take advantage of this trend.
Robinson Crusoe is a fantastic story, although loosely based on a true narrative, because it posits a single individual surviving and thriving on a deserted island for decades. It is more interested in verisimilitude than Gulliver's Travels as it is not trying to satirize European barbarisms and the travel genre itself, but is trying to make it seem entirely real...
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and plausible that Crusoe could survive by showing how he did. In this novel, verisimilitude is built through formal structure: the story is told in the format of a diary, with exhaustive piling on of detail that tells us exactly what supplies Crusoe has and exactly how he marshals the resources of island to survive. We are shown exactly how he uses his ingenuity to overcome obstacles and how he realistically battles his inner demons as he struggles to survive, making him a believable character. The power of the book is that the reader can get inside Crusoe's skin and see how he copes. A reader can imagine being Crusoe and facing the same circumstances.
Gulliver's Travels introduces many more fantastical elements than Crusoe, in part because it is satirizing travel writing by exaggerating it—and making points about the myth of the superiority of European culture. At the same time, Gulliver, like Robinson Crusoe, introduces no magical elements. We might meet tiny people or giant people, tyrannical Asian despots, bizarre experimenters, or reasonable horses, but they all function under the same laws of physics as we do. The Lilliputians, for example, have to deal with practical problems when faced by the intrusion of a gigantic man into their society. The story attains verisimilitude as we watch the details of how they pin Gulliver down, how much food it takes to feed him, how they obtain it, and the pragmatic ways he functions in their society.
Gulliver, like Crusoe, is a believable and consistent character. If Crusoe's resourcefulness drives Defoe's novel, so Gulliver's consistent tendency to be taken in by what he sees and hears drives Swift's work.
Though very different in intent, both works use verisimilitude to create worlds that are both psychologically real and are full of realistic detail. This quality of verisimilitude is integral to defining these works as novels.