Page 111 - Gullivers

their bodies frozen in the hope of defeating mortality. The rulers and inhabitants of the various countries visited are, for the most part, humans of normal size, though of decidedly odd characteristics and mentalities. The section ends with an actual visit to Japan. The humorous name of the island of Laputa (possibly Spanish for a whore) has serendipitous evocations for the modern reader, with
its suggestion of ‘laptop’ and ‘computer’, so appropriate in a world in which the only subjects studied are mathematics and music, and in which a prototype computer exists in the form of a machine to enable people to write books on topics they know nothing about. Much of Swist’s satire is directed at ‘The Royal Society of London for The Improvement of Knowledge’. Swist’s original work here must be one of the greatest anti-intellectual works of literature, raging as it dœs against everything progressive in enlightenment thought. It is in that sense a work of radical conservatism. It contains a satiric attack on enlightenment philosophy, science, linguistics, medicine, music, mathematics, history, and politics. Intellectuals are stereotyped as distracted, inattentive, forgetful, and ineffective creatures. Their projects are ridiculous, even obscene. Mathematicians cannot measure correctly to make a suit for Gulliver. Musicologists create only cacophony. Architects build houses that cannot function. Scientific projects reach a nadir as one scientist attempts to reconvert excrement into food. In Balnibarbi sensible agriculture is destroyed by ideas and ideology. In Glubbdubdrib, the land of sorcerers, the ghost of the Greek philosopher Aristotle dismisses the work of enlightenment philosopher Descartes. Newton’s theory of gravity is dismissed
as mere fashion that will become outdated. Jenkins keeps all these references as well as those to historical figures such as Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar and Thomas More. It is interesting to speculate on the challenge of this to the modern child reader. It is difficult to imagine that those of the target age of between nine and twelve would engage meaningfully with much of it, without detailed explanation. They would however thoroughly enjoy the richness, inventiveness, humour, absurdity, and scatological rudeness of the illustration.
Chris Riddell
V. Jonathan Swist’s Gulliver, 2004 105