
Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s travels’ is not a travel writing at all. It is a travel into absurd and fantastic lands. It uses maps, figures, speed of ships, latitudes, longitudes. It uses markers of travel literature like topography, climate, bridges. It provides actual physical details but all of these are journeys into fantastic lands. Swift is also mocking the tradition of travel writing itself. He is suggesting that most of this travelogues written during the Elizabethan and early Enlightenment ages were actually admixtures of facts and fictions. Therefore there is a strong critique of the factuality of the travel writing within the text also. And Swift’s satire in Gulliver’s Travels is well portrayed.
Gulliver’s Travels is not a travel writing. It is a particular kind of satire, Mennipean satire ( a satire which is directed towards a particular school of philosophy). In this case Swift is a comprehensive critique of the philosophy of the Enlightenment.
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