Satire as a Literary Genre: The Degradation of Values in Gulliver’s Travels (1726) By Jonathan Swift

Abstract

This study highlights the power of satire as literary genre. Since the early Roman literature, writers relied on satire to heal society from the evils and follies that tempt the human soul. This process of healing may take a humorous form as well as an aggressive tone. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is by far the most representative work of that genre. It uses both humour and aggressiveness to ridicule and attack human vice. Gulliver is a surgeon and an adventurer who records his journey to farther strange lands, where no European has been before. A Voyage to Lilliput and A Voyage to Brobdingnag are respectively humorous and aggressive attacks on the British trivial problems over religion, and how corrupt is the British political body. A Voyage to Laputa. Satirises scientific unnecessary advance; whereas A Voyage to The Country of the Houyhnhnms which culminates Gulliver’s adventures is often related to Swift’s perpetual hatred for the human race. The degradation of values is represented in the Yahoos who represent the human race when it loses the sense of reason. Swift crafts his satire essentially to re-establish political, religious and social values and free the humanity from the thing which was not.