Want to know the world? Look it up close. Want to like it? Look it up from the distance.”
(Ion Luca Caragiale)

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was born in Dublin being of English descent. Dryden was his cousin, Congreve was his schoolmate at the school of Kilkenny, as well as at Trinity College, in Cambrige.
After the Revolution, he was admitted as a private secretary to sir William Temple. Having access to the latter’s rich library, Swift made good use of it, becoming an eminent student. He remained at Sir William Temple’s residence for some ten years, making the acquaintance of many important personalities. Yet, longing for complete independence, he resumed his theological studies and returned to Ireland where he took orders. Soon, we find him near Sir William Temple again where he remained till his death.
In the meantime, he made frequent visits to London, becoming a good friend of famous writers of that time, such as Congreve, Addison, Steele and he started writing pamphlets on ecclesiastical subjects. Dissatisfied with the Whigs, for whom he wrote first, Swift changed sides and, soon, the Tories made him Dean of the Dublin Cathedral. This period marked the climax of Swift as a pamphleteer.
The hostility if Queen Anne represented a huge obstacle for his career of to his further advancement making Swift retire to Ireland for the rest of his life. All these experiences made out of him a thoroughly embittered man.
During the period he spent as a secretary in Temple’s house, Swift wrote his Tale of Tub, a fierce satire on “corruptions in religion and learning”, as well as The Battle of the Books, written in mockheroic style and describing a sort of ludicrous Homeric context between the ancients and the moderns.
In 1713, he started his Journal to Stella. In 1726, he visited England once more and joined Pope and Artbuthnot in publishing Miscellanies. In the same year he published Gulliver’s Travels, his most popular book that could be easily considered as a book both for adults and for children.
The work was published anonymously. Swift expected that the book, which contained a lot of satirical tones would meet with violent apposition, but the success was tremendous. Both Pope and Gay pointed out that the “travels” were wonderful.
In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift and his character, Gulliver, have separate personalities. Swift does not express his views through Gulliver, but through the foreign societies and cultures that Gulliver sees (though is unable to put into critical perspective).
As a seemingly wise and educated man, throughout the novel Gulliver’s Travels, the narrator cleverly gains the reader’s respect as a thinking and observant individual. With the position in mind, the comments and ideas that Gulliver inflicts upon those reading about his journeys certainly have their own identity as they coincide with his beliefs and statements on the state of humanity and civilization in particular. Everywhere Gulliver goes, he seems to comment on the good and bad points of the people he encounters. Sometimes, he finds a civilization that he can find virtues within, but he also encounters peoples and places, which truly disgust him in their manner of operation and civility. Overall, Swift gives Gulliver a generally negative and cynical attitude to words the manner in which his current day English counter parts behaved cleverly disguised in the subtext of his encounters with other nations that either contrasted the way they live, or mirrored unflatteringly his contemporaries life styles.
Gulliver remarks about the Lilliputians, Brobdingnagians Laputans, Honyhnhnms and Yahoos in a straightforward way, reporting on the cultures, rather than analyzing them. Swift thus disguised his allusions to the political and philosophical thought of his time, allowing the reader, not Gulliver, to discover them. The book can be read as a simple adventure story and travelogue (as Gulliver intends), or as a complex satire on 18th century morals and thought (as Swift intends).

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