Page 90 - Gullivers

visitor are visually captured, and other popular scenes from the Brobdingnagian episode include Gulliver falling into a bowl of cream or battling with a frog, and
again many illustrators show the eagle carrying off Gulliver in his box home.
Of course, these scenes offer illustrators an opportunity for dramatic play with concepts of large and small, and the Lilliputian illustrations in particular have provided a number of artists considerable opportunities in their depictions of the ‘crowd scenes’ in Lilliput. There is something quite cinematic about these scenes, and, for example, Gulliver roped to the ground or scrutinised by giant farmers act as establishing shots that set the scene for what comes next.
Gulliver is shown urinating on the fire in the Lilliputian queen’s apartments in several editions. Poirson views him from the back, delicately holding out his jacket with one hand; Riddell also offers
a back view, but this time Gulliver casts
a furtive glance at the reader over one shoulder. Grandville protects Gulliver’s modesty with a pillar, while in Alexander King’s robust version, Gulliver unleashes
a gush that would surely have flooded Lilliput. This episode is excised from some
editions, in particular the more recent retellings for younger readers. The Martin Jenkins and Chris Riddell edition retains it however, as does a 1990s edition illustrated by Martin Hargreaves.
Artists have found splendid opportunity to play with colour and design throughout Gulliver’s Travels, and it is obvious that some illustrators have enjoyed picturing the inventive artefacts encountered by Gulliver, especially in the later voyages. This is especially evident in the nineteenth-century editions, reflecting a contemporary preoccupation with science and invention. One incident captured with variations in a number of editions concerns the transfer of parts of politicians’ brains in the Lagado Academy, so that reasonable agreement could be reached by means of political arguments taking place within their skulls. Various means by which this might have taken place are suggested visually: from Grandville who favours a vertical cranial incision to Rhead and Morten who
show a horizontal incision, enabling the crown to be removed, thus facilitating
the exchange of brain matter.
Inevitably, scrutiny of so many editions of Gulliver’s Travels raises the question of
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