Jonathan Swift's Fiction

Jonathan Swift’s fiction and narrative satire use imaginary voyages, allegory, and invented speakers to examine human pride and public wrongdoing. In Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726, Lemuel Gulliver’s encounters with societies of radically different scales and customs expose the limits of his familiar assumptions. Other satirical prose adopts an apparently reasonable voice whose arguments reveal moral blindness. Swift’s controlled language makes the gap between a speaker’s confidence and the consequences of his reasoning especially important. His invented settings and perspectives serve a critical purpose, demanding judgment rather than simple acceptance of what a narrator says.