Gulliver, medium, technique

Bullard, P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7193-0844 (2016) Gulliver, medium, technique. English Literary History, 83 (2). pp. 517-541. ISSN 1080-6547 doi: 10.1353/elh.2016.0010

Abstract/Summary

In the four Parts of Gulliver’s Travels the narrator attends closely to the manual skills, crafts and techniques of the different countries visited and to the materials and instruments by which they are mediated. The patterned, motif-like presentation of these observations and their rich contextual background, historical and literary, indicate their special significance. These references to technique play an important, previously underappreciated roll in Gulliver. They form a thematic connection between its embodied, sensual, compulsive descriptions of the world and its socio-political satire, the latter focusing on technocratic, professionalized statecraft. They are crucial to the peculiar fullness with which Swift’s writing imagines different communities of practice, different ecologies of mind.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/53024
Identification Number/DOI	10.1353/elh.2016.0010
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Literature and Languages > English Literature
Publisher	John Hopkins University Press
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