Swift, Jonathan

• Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin of British parents, during the revolution of 1688. He left Ireland and he went to England where he worked for Sir William Temple which encouraged him to write his first works satirical.
His best satires were:

1) The battle of the books
2) A tle of a tub
3) A proposal for the universal use of Irish manufacture

• In 1726 he published his masterpiece Gulliver's Travels, a novel satirical about the poverty of the people which selling their children as food for the rich, his biting irony was directed especially to the Irish who saw in Swift their misfortune. He died in 1745.

• Swift has an idea pessimistic about society of his time. In a letter to the Pope he describes man as "an animal capable of reason" according to him, the reason is an instrument that must be used properly. Swift found on the irony and satire his temperament and his interests.

• Gulliver's Travels was published in London in 1726, it consists in four books that tell the adventures of Lemuel Gulliver.
In the first book, he sails from Bristol on 4th May 1699 and he crosses the South Pacific and he landed on a land Lilliput, the inhabitants are called Lilliputians and they are only six inches high. Gulliver learn their language, their traditions and he gains the favor of the king. These people live in a society organizations. After this amusing experience back in England.
In the second book he sails for India and he landed in a country in Alaska Brobdingang, the inhabitants of this land are the giants are high twelve times more than Gulliver, and this causes him misadventures. One day he is taken from an enormous bird and he dropped in the middle if the ocean but he managed to save and return to England.
The third book after battling pirates Gulliver flies on Laputa, where the inhabitants are absent minds, astronomers, scientists who made strange experiments. After visiting the island Gulliver drops in Japan and then he returned to England.
Gulliver in the fourth book makes its last voyage, he meets the inhabitants who are horses endowed with reason, the Yahoos,they are similar to human beings they walk on two legs, not four. Once back home, Gulliver is happy to see his wife and children, but he could not bear the smell of the human race and goes to live in his stall.