Jonathan Swift's satirical masterpiece, Gulliver's Travels, has shocked and delighted readers worldwide since its publication in 1726. At turns a humorous and harrowing indictment of human behaviour, it has been endlessly reinterpreted by critics and adapted across media by other artists. The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver's Travels comprises 17 original chapters by leading scholars, written in a theoretically-informed but accessible style. As well as providing detailed close readings of each part of the narrative, this Companion relates Gulliver's Travels to the political, religious, scientific, colonial, and intellectual debates in which Swift was engaged, and it assesses the form of the book as a novel, travel book, philosophical treatise, and satire. Finally, it explores the Travels' rich and varied afterlives: the controversies it has fuelled, the films and artworks it has inspired, and the enduring need authors have felt to 'write back' to Swift's original, disturbing, and challenging story.
ISBN: | 9781108830195 |
Publication date: | 19th October 2023 |
Author: | Daniel Cook, Nicholas Seager |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
Format: | Hardback |
Pagination: | 228 pages |
Series: | Cambridge Companions to Literature |
Genres: |
Literary companions, book reviews and guides Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800 Satirical fiction and parodies |