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19th-Century British Literature Videos 19 videos
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Gulliver's Travels 24050 Views
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Description:
Gulliver's Travels is a classic tale of adventure with a dash of what-the-heck-is-happening thrown in for good measure.
Transcript
- 00:04
Gulliver's Travels, a la Shmoop. Lemuel Gulliver sure gets around.
- 00:10
He's like an 18th-century version of some dorky PBS travel host.
- 00:14
Thanks to good ol' Gully, we learn a lot about the lands of Lilliput <<Lilly-put>>, Brobdingnag
- 00:18
<<brob-dig-nag>>, Laputa <<lah-poo-tah>>, and all the rest.
- 00:22
We become pretty tight with Gulliver, too, but when it comes to the other characters...
Full Transcript
- 00:26
...Jonathan Swift doesn't give us all that great of a view.
- 00:29
If Gulliver's Travels is such a great book...
- 00:32
...why did Swift slack off in the characterization department?
- 00:40
Possible slack motivation #1: It's called Gulliver's Travels.
- 00:45
That means precisely one character should be developed—guess who?
- 00:49
It's not "Lilliputians <<lilly-put-ee-ins>> vs. Wild," or "the Real Houyhnhnms [Who-Inn-Emms]
- 00:54
of Orange County."
- 00:55
If it's all about Gulliver... there's no need to worry about the rest of the gang, right?
- 01:00
Possible slack motivation #2: Gulliver's Travels isn't a book about character anyway.
- 01:07
Instead, it's a parody of a specific genre—travel narratives.
- 01:11
See, rich people of the Enlightenment spent their "hakuna matata" days traveling the world.
- 01:18
And they loved to wax poetic about what they saw.
- 01:26
Gulliver's Travels is just a parody of those types of books.
- 01:29
In other words, we don't get to know anyone because we're not supposed to get to know
- 01:33
anyone.
- 01:34
Characters aren't super developed in travel narratives, so why would they be here?
- 01:40
Possible slack motivation #3: The "characters" in Gulliver's Travels aren't so much characters
- 01:47
as they are symbols. Each of the characters represents someone or something.
- 01:53
Why? Because Gulliver's Travels is a satire. It's a comedic book designed to point out
- 01:58
the flaws in European society...
- 02:00
...so Swift's readers would have definitely recognized themselves in the story.
- 02:06
For example, any upper-class British dude would've read about the Lilliputians and said,
- 02:12
"hey, that's me!" So if the characters are actually symbols
- 02:16
of European society...
- 02:17
...then they don't need feelings, motivations, and all the other things that make up characterization
- 02:22
sausage.
- 02:24
They just need to have enough meat for us to be able to recognize what exactly they
- 02:28
represent.
- 02:28
From there, we can figure out the rest.
- 02:31
So what do you think?
- 02:33
Did Swift skimp on characterization because he wanted us to focus on Gulliver...
- 02:37
...because genre trumped characterization...
- 02:40
...or because the characters are just meant to be symbols?
- 02:44
Shmoop amongst yourselves.
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