Swift's use of the literature of travel in the composition of "Gulliver's travels"

The primary aim of this thesis is to identify and assess the correspondences which occur between Gulliver's Travels and non fiction travel writing to which Swift is known to have had access before and during the period of composition. Books of travels listed by Harold Williams in Dean Swift's Library (Cambridge, 1932) have been consulted. In particular, the thesis examines the possible contribution of travel documents published by Hakluyt and Purchas. The method of research employed has been to concentrate upon themes such as the veracity of travel writers, stylistic features, primitive savages, strange islands, magic,attitudes to voyaging, bows and arrows, pygmies and giants, motives for travel, law and customs. The first chapter summarizes known and possible influences, considering the broad combination of fabulous and imaginary prose travel with Swift's mock realism. The second chapter develops the analysis of literary parody and considers the uneasy satirical relationship between travel lies and Gulliver's ironic veracity, with particular reference to magic and astrology. Chapters 3-7 comprise five regional studies of several themes which have been considered of special relevance to Gulliver's Travels, following this survey of travel writing. The conclusions reached in the course of the thesis relate to the allusive power and ironic depth of Gulliver's Travels. Whereas R.W. Frantz, W.A. Eddy, Arthur Sherbo and others have noticed incidental parallels in real travel literature, no comprehensive study exists of the subject as a whole. The thesis treats Hakluyt and Purchas in detail in working towards establishing the conventions of travel writing which are partly imitated and partly mocked by Swift. The extent to which it is intended that the reader should be conscious of the real travel background is also explored. Although source hunting can be an unprofitable activity, the large number of correspondences between Gulliver's Travels and the literature of real travel upon which the work is partly based suggest Swift was more conversant with voyages and travels than may have been presumed. These travel features appear to have been carefully intermingled with recognizable Homeric, Rabelaisian and Lucianic elements

Novel Heroes: Domesticating the British, Eighteenth-Century Male Adventurer

In the "General Introduction" of his Account of the Voyages and Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere (1773), John Hawkesworth writes that Captain James Cook's portion of the Account is written up from logs kept by the Captain, Sir Joseph Banks, and from "other papers equally authentic." Hawkesworth makes a more surprising admission in revealing that his relation of Cook's Account was influenced, specifically, by Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740), and so Richardson's domestic heroine becomes a model for the greatest male adventurer of the age. Hawkesworth's inclination to lean upon a literary model in his effort to textually "domesticate" his rendition of Captain Cook is not as unusual as the editor's open admission of intent and his candid citing of the Pamela source. This project rests upon the assertion that there is far less division between the travel log and the novel than previously argued, and that the writers of period travel narratives drew upon the same themes and used the same aesthetic strategies that novelists deployed. Further, it is my contention that this aesthetic formulation--this peculiar brand of domestic heroism borrowed from period novels and their heroines that is appropriated by the constructed male adventurer and enables him to separate and preserve himself from all external savagery--is a formulation that appears repeatedly in eighteenth-century travel literature. First, I will define "domestic" and describe the masculine variety of "domestic heroism" or "oeconomy" that is being appropriated by male adventurers. In the first two chapters, I will trace the dichotomy of the successful "domestic housewife" or "oeconomic" hero versus the undomesticated anti-hero through a set of examples: Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (versus Swift's Gulliver) and Hawkesworth's Richardsonian Captain Cook (versus Bligh). In the third chapter, I will demonstrate that Mungo Park constructs himself as a deeply vulnerable, gothic, Ann Radcliffe heroine in his Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa. In the final chapter, looking primarily at Dibdin's fictional Hannah Hewit; or, The Female Crusoe, I will argue that since the successful male adventurer must possess both female and male attributes, no room is left for the adventuring woman

Fluid Borders, Concrete Locations: Epicenters of Cross-Cultural Interaction in the Eighteenth Century Borderland of the Great Lakes

In a recent article on the advent of borderlands history as a prominent field of historical scholarship, Pekka Hämäläinen and Samuel Truett described borderlands as “realms where boundaries are also crossroads, peripheries are also central places, homelands are also passing-through places, and the end points of empire are also forks in the road.” One such region that certainly fits this definition of a borderland and unquestionably hosts such specific crossroads and cultural junctions is the maritime region of the Great Lakes of North America. [excerpt

Ireland's influence on eighteenth century English literature

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

Outward bound: women translators and scientific travel writing, 1780–1800

As the Enlightenment drew to a close, translation had gradually acquired an increasingly important role in the international circulation and transmission of scientific knowledge. Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to the translators responsible for making such accounts accessible in other languages, some of whom were women. In this article I explore how European women cast themselves as intellectually enquiring, knowledgeable and authoritative figures in their translations. Focusing specifically on the genre of scientific travel writing, I investigate the narrative strategies deployed by women translators to mark their involvement in the process of scientific knowledge-making. These strategies ranged from rhetorical near-invisibility, driven by women's modest marginalization of their own public engagement in science, to the active advertisement of themselves as intellectually curious consumers of scientific knowledge. A detailed study of Elizabeth Helme's translation of the French ornithologist Françoise le Vaillant's Voyage dans l'intérieur de l'Afrique [Voyage into the Interior of Africa] (1790) allows me to explore how her reworking of the original text for an Anglophone reading public enabled her to engage cautiously – or sometimes more openly – with questions regarding how scientific knowledge was constructed, for whom and with which aims in mind

Who is Tom Bombadil?: Interpreting the Light in Frodo Baggins and Tom Bombadil\u27s Role in the Healing of Traumatic Memory in J.R.R. Tolkien\u27s _Lord of the Rings_

In Rivendell, after Frodo has been attacked by Ringwraiths and is healing from the removal of the splinter from a Morgul-blade that had been making its way toward his heart, Gandalf regards Frodo and contemplates a “clear light” that is visible through Frodo to “eyes to see that can.” Samwise Gamgee later sees this light in Frodo when Frodo is resting in Ithilien. The first half of this essay considers questions about this light: how does Frodo become transparent, and why, and what is the nature of the light that fills him? As recourse to Tolkien’s letters shows, the light is related to the virtues of Frodo’s character: love, self-sacrifice, humility, perseverance. The light in Frodo also is related to the light in the Phial of Galadrial, which comes from the Earendil’s Silmaril set in the heavens above Middle-earth, which is called the Morning Star. Because “Morning Star” is a name for Jesus in the New Testament, the light within Frodo may be interpreted, symbolically, as the Christ-light. The second half of this essay considers how this light was ignited in Frodo, specifically by asking: who is Tom Bombadil, and what does he have to do with the light inside of Frodo? The essay explores multiple explanations for the long-standing, critically-debated mystery of Tom Bombadil’s identity, ultimately showing that he must be interpreted at multiple levels of meaning simultaneously. Intriguingly, Tom Bombadil has parallels to the first Adam and the second Adam, Jesus, especially in his role as “Eldest” (or ab origine) and in his ability to bring light to Frodo in the grave of the barrow-wight, save him from death by his song, and heal him from spiritual “drowning” – a word that Tom uses to describe Frodo’s terrifying experience in the barrow and which relates to Frodo’s original childhood wound: the primal loss of his parents, who drowned in a tragic accident. When Frodo receives healing from this trauma, he is strengthened to endure what he later experiences on his quest to destroy the Ring

Michael Davitt’s wartime visit to South Africa (March–May 1900) and its consequences

In view of renewed interest in the radical Irish nationalist leader and land reform agitator Michael Davitt and his ideas, this article reconsiders his much publicised fact-finding visit to the war-torn Boer republics in South Africa and its context. Davitt resigned as an Irish nationalist member of parliament (MP) from the British House of Commons over the Anglo-Boer War, rather than any Irish issue. He was in South Africa from late March to early May 1900, where he met the leaders of the republics and senior generals. On his return to Ireland, Davitt wrote a 600-page partisan book on the Anglo-Boer War. The South African experience remained special to him. After his return to Europe, Davitt became closely associated with the Kruger-exile coterie, drifting away from mainline Irish nationalism. This article traces Davitt’s visit and discusses the effect it had on him, on Irish nationalism and on the Boer republics he visited.Keywords: Michael Davitt, Ireland, South Africa, Anglo-Boer Wa

'In countries so unciviliz'd as those?': the language of incivility and the British experience of the world

’Civilisation’, wrote Arnold J. Toynbee in the 1950s, ‘is a movement, not a condition; it is a voyage, not a harbour.’1 In a similar vein, the ways in which peoples and nations have thought others to be civilised, or uncivilised, have altered and changed over time. This development is true particularly of the contact over the past 1,000 years between the British and those they thought to be, and deemed, ‘uncivilised’. The ways in which British writers represented and constructed these ‘uncivilised’ peoples in their factual narratives and explanations, and the extent to which those writers engaged with shifting and changing conceptions of such people, allow an insight into the reactions and attitudes of the British towards those they encountered through imperial expansions and travel abroad. This chapter therefore seeks to analyse the ways in which the English-speaking peoples have sought to conceptualise those deemed uncivil, through an investigation into the word choices which scholars now know were available to them at each stage in the evolution of the English language