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I have taught this book, or rather portions of it, for several decades in a sophomore survey course of "world"/mostly Western literature. (This suits me fine as I only teach languages that I can read - Russian, Latin, French, Italian, and sometimes English. I would say that "Gulliver's Travels" is Swift's second-best book, after "The Battle of the Books" and "A Tale of a Tub" (I believe they were published together, but I don't recall for sure). Those works are brilliant and erudite - two qualities that he did his best to suppress as he, along with Defoe and Fielding, helped invent the novel.
Swift is an extraordinary writer. He was the first English radical to master satirical irony, which made his radicalism not only palatable but even delightful. Of course, he is savage in his portrayal of America - "I have heard, from an American of my acquaintance, that the human child, in its first year, is a tasty morsel...". His savage satire on the British treatment of Ireland in "A Modest Proposal" is also notable. I apologize to Dr Swift for reducing his prose to mine; it's 1 AM and I'm too lazy to reach for his book on the shelf after a day of splitting beautiful, red-steaked juniper wood for kindling this winter.
I have a long history with "Gulliver's Travels" since it was the only book required for entering freshmen to read the summer before their freshman year at what was then the best college in the country: Amherst. When we all arrived on campus, Prof G Armour Craig spoke in Johnson Chapel about how "Gulliver's Travels" was a fair approximation of four years at college: arriving feeling swollen with the pride of our high school achievements; sophomores feeling tiny in comparison with all their competitors and with what they'd learned freshman year; juniors, choosing a major and entranced with "science," the new knowledge they were majoring in; seniors, growing doubtful of human achievement and their fellow "yahoos."
It turned out that Armour Craig was my freshman writing teacher. He gave daily provocative assignments like "Did you ever lie? Tell of a time when you lied." The next day, "What were you doing with language when you lied? How was it possible to use words that did not convey meaning?" And so on, for every class, for the whole semester - and the whole year. Craig's colleague, Ted Baird, would enter his class on the first day in Appleton Hall, on the ground (literally) floor, and say, pointing at the window, "What's that?" Some hapless freshman would say, "A window?" TB would reply, "No, it's a door - can't you see I just entered through it?" Then he'd throw his hat in the wastebasket and ask, "What's that?" The student would say, "A wastebasket." TB would say, "No, it's a hatrack - can't you see I placed my hat there?"
I also recall brilliant fellow freshmen in freshman composition (and Humanities, where Rolfe Humphries taught my freshman Humanities class - his own translation of Vergil, which was used all over the country at the time. A visiting Harvard freshman was amazed that a senior professor taught freshmen, but at Amherst College, they all did - really taught and read our papers. Now they're all "student-centered" - and avoid reading student papers). One fellow freshman fixed the Hubble space Telescope; one became the 12th most published scientist in the world, with 800+ publications.
Swift is an extraordinary writer. He was the first English radical to master satirical irony, which made his radicalism not only palatable but even delightful. Of course, he is savage in his portrayal of America - "I have heard, from an American of my acquaintance, that the human child, in its first year, is a tasty morsel...". His savage satire on the British treatment of Ireland in "A Modest Proposal" is also notable. I apologize to Dr Swift for reducing his prose to mine; it's 1 AM and I'm too lazy to reach for his book on the shelf after a day of splitting beautiful, red-steaked juniper wood for kindling this winter.
I have a long history with "Gulliver's Travels" since it was the only book required for entering freshmen to read the summer before their freshman year at what was then the best college in the country: Amherst. When we all arrived on campus, Prof G Armour Craig spoke in Johnson Chapel about how "Gulliver's Travels" was a fair approximation of four years at college: arriving feeling swollen with the pride of our high school achievements; sophomores feeling tiny in comparison with all their competitors and with what they'd learned freshman year; juniors, choosing a major and entranced with "science," the new knowledge they were majoring in; seniors, growing doubtful of human achievement and their fellow "yahoos."
It turned out that Armour Craig was my freshman writing teacher. He gave daily provocative assignments like "Did you ever lie? Tell of a time when you lied." The next day, "What were you doing with language when you lied? How was it possible to use words that did not convey meaning?" And so on, for every class, for the whole semester - and the whole year. Craig's colleague, Ted Baird, would enter his class on the first day in Appleton Hall, on the ground (literally) floor, and say, pointing at the window, "What's that?" Some hapless freshman would say, "A window?" TB would reply, "No, it's a door - can't you see I just entered through it?" Then he'd throw his hat in the wastebasket and ask, "What's that?" The student would say, "A wastebasket." TB would say, "No, it's a hatrack - can't you see I placed my hat there?"
I also recall brilliant fellow freshmen in freshman composition (and Humanities, where Rolfe Humphries taught my freshman Humanities class - his own translation of Vergil, which was used all over the country at the time. A visiting Harvard freshman was amazed that a senior professor taught freshmen, but at Amherst College, they all did - really taught and read our papers. Now they're all "student-centered" - and avoid reading student papers). One fellow freshman fixed the Hubble space Telescope; one became the 12th most published scientist in the world, with 800+ publications.