Gulliver’s Travels (2008)
Gulliver’s Travels: allegorical satire, utopian fantasy and comic thriller novel altogether.
By Paddy Salmon
Jonathan Swift was born in 1667 in Ireland (of English parents) but it was a country for which he felt little love. His career was in the Church of England and in 1713 he became Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, but he died in 1745 a disappointed man, never having reaped the rewards he felt were owed to him for his services to the Tory government in Britain.
- réalisation: Edouard Noonan
His high spot was in the years from 1710-1713, when he was dining weekly with the prime minister, Robert Harley and scheming with his Secretary of State, Henry St. John, to attack the opposing party, the Whigs, through satirical pamphlets.
In this he was highly successful, helping to turn public opinion against the long-running War of the Spanish Succession and in favour of the Treaty of Utrecht. The death in 1714 of Queen Anne and the fall of the Tory administration brought in a Whig government keen for revenge. His friends were driven into exile or prosecuted and Swift returned to the relative safety of Dublin.
There in the years of 1721-1725, Swift wrote Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver or, as it quickly became known, Gulliver’s Travels (1726). In a tradition, which includes writers like Lucian, Rabelais and Cyrano de Bergerac, the Travels are partly allegorical satire (in a parody of travel literature). But they are also partly utopian fantasy and partly comic "thriller" novel, or early "science fiction".
Lilliput, a kingdom full of arrogant little people
Gulliver ("gullible"?) is an innocent Englishman, who is constantly washed up in strange lands, where he finds not only himself but his ideas and his culture under attack. We all know about his adventures in Lilliput, a kingdom rather similar to England, full of arrogant little people who feel they are the centre of the universe.
I am afraid that I had the mischievous idea of turning Lilliput into a miniature USA! Don’t worry, all you Americans, Britain comes in for her fair share of criticism also! The next country, Brobdingnag, is a land of gentle giants, who cannot believe little Gulliver’s arrogance as he tries to defend European "civilisation" to them.
A country ruled by talking horses
The last two parts are the least well known, and in this adaptation I had time to refer to them only briefly in a surrealistic dream sequence. Laputa (la pute?!) is a floating island full of mad inventors, whilst the country of the Houyhnhnms is the darkest area of Swift’s vision.
This country is ruled by talking horses, who are governed absolutely by reason. They are pitted against an inferior race of filthy, evil, lecherous beings, who walk on two legs. And Gulliver looks suspiciously like them! On his return, finally, Gulliver, who is now totally disillusioned, cannot get used to the corrupt and vicious civilisation to which he belongs.
"I hate and detest that animal called man..."
After he had finished writing this book (which he considered so politically dangerous that his friends threw the manuscript on to the printer’s doorstep from a carriage at night) Swift wrote, "I have ever hated all Nations, professions and Communities, and all my love is towards individuals.....but principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so forth".
In the end, for a work which depends greatly on irony for its satirical effects, the supreme irony is that Gulliver wrote this to attack his enemies, to shock them and to mock them. But the book became an instant best-seller and his enemies all loved it. Even today it is considered staple fare for children, in censored versions, of course!
Dernière modification le 02-05-08 par
