Truth in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels

Résumé du document

In his 'Gulliver's Travels: A Critical Study', A. W. Eddy defines Swift's work as a response to the 'popular craze for discovery' that prevailed during the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries. Indeed, the forerunners of Gulliver's Travels (1735) are numerous. Among them, we could cite Thomas More's 'Utopia' (1516), F. Godwin's 'The Man in the Moon' (1638), Defoe's Consolidator (1705) and Robinson Crusoe (1719), T. Campanella's 'The City of the Sun' (1623), and even Fr. Bacon's 'The New Atlantis' (1622), but also the writings of Rabelais, Cyrano de Bergerac, Marco Polo and Mandeville. What is immediately noticeable in the list we have drafted, is the simultaneous presence of real and fictitious voyages, of ordinary seamen describing their discoveries, and of imaginative men shaping a variety of marvelous worlds. To sum up, on the one hand we have marvelous, fictitious and/or utopian travel-narratives, while on the other we have authentic, realistic, standard travel-narratives. Partly, due to its rich literary background, Gulliver's Travels seems to be all of them at once. Hence, it is frequently suggested that there might be more than one reading to the text. It oscillates between truth and fiction, which would allow a variety of interpretations and points of view. But in this case, could we say that there is a plurality of truths?

Extraits

[...] And it is not enough to speak of suspension of disbelief here. The Truth Gulliver professes is a truth beyond the everyday. Works cited W. A. EDDY, Gulliver's Travels: A Critical Study, Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith R. GRAVIL Swift: Gulliver's Travels. A Casebook, London: Macmillan F. P. LOCK, The Politics of Gulliver's Travels, Oxford: Clarendon Press J. SWIFT, A. [...]

[...] But on what part of reality? The Lilliputians “suppose Truth [ ] to be in every Man's power” (Swift 54). It is likewise in the power of the reader who embarks on a quest, on a search for meaning, and this activity transforms reading itself into a quest for the truth. There seems to be one fundamental idea in Gulliver's Travels and it is the following: human life and its true values are relative, the opposite of truth being yet another truth. [...]

[...] But in this case, could we say that there is a plurality of truths? It is always easy to avoid the extremes by saying that there are as many readings to a text as there are readers. In itself, this is true but, we suppose that the answer is We will try to concentrate on one reading of the text and demonstrate that when it comes to Gulliver's Travels, truth is a concept which can easily be manipulated and with which the narrator plays. [...]

[...] The Names of all which Virtues are still retained [ ] in most Languages” (Swift 266). A society that has acquired these can come in possession of new Dominion acquired with a Title by Divine Right” (Swift 266 267) and instead of sending an “execrable Crew of Butchers” (Swift 267) Shore to Rob and Plunder” (Swift 266), its government shall be Example to the whole World” (Swift 267). It is a truth which does not entirely convince Gulliver since it seems unattainable to him. Yet, it is the truth of his narrative. [...]

[...] In reality, Swift uses the devices of the authentic travel-narrative but the substance of his narrator's accounts is fictitious and/or marvelous. The host of the circumstantial trifles we have enumerated serves to disarm the reader's suspicion. But the most important fact is that the inclusion and fusion of irrelevant and essential detail demonstrate the inconsistent and undramatic plots of real life, the development of which in many cases leads to nothing original. This, of course, is part of the implicit debate about truth and fiction launched in Gulliver's Travels. [...]