We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from Part III - Literary Background
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 May 2024
Swift wrote the most widely reprinted and profound fictional travel account in all literature. This chapter suggests that Swift’s Anglo-Irish status, and repeated travel between England and Ireland, shaped his perspective on travel. The first section of the chapter focuses on Swift’s own travels across the Irish Sea and on Irish roads. The second section looks into the Grand Tour and Swift’s reading of travel narratives. The third section shows how Swift’s reading of first-hand travelogues shaped the larger structure of Gulliver’s Travels. Swift is typical of his period in regarding travel writing as equally enlightening and suspect. He is atypical in being uncertain about his own place in the world, both geographically and professionally. However, it is that very uncertainty that grants Swift the ironic distance necessary to transform the popular form of the travel narrative into a timeless commentary on the human condition.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
