3 best books by Jonathan Swift

Back in the XNUMXth century there were already those who anticipated the use of the fable as a double narrative function. In principle, a creative side towards the strictly fantastic, but without forgetting the possible social criticism that any parallelism can favor. AND Jonathan Swift, in his condition as a religious man and with recognized political sympathies, was that satirical author capable of disguising everything as excellent literature, which is what it is about, being able to criticize fiercely while telling a suggestive story around characters or adventure that really captivate any reader.

Nothing more emblematic of this double intention than his great work Gulliver's Travels, a different story that surprised and still today has its sequels in the heterogeneous field of adventure and fantasy, but which also harbored an underground will to criticize the politics of those days, while delving into even philosophical ideas.

But beyond the great work on Gulliver and his adventures, accommodated today to the fantasy genre without further interpretations, this author's always polemical narrative offers us many other works in which that literature committed to the critical is already detected as a necessary source in which fiction becomes a reflection of reality.

Top 3 Recommended Books by Jonathan Swift

Gulliver's Travels

There is something of magical transformation in this novel, of literary sublimation, of reinterpretation. It cannot be understood in any other way for a novel with an intense critical will, with its marked socio-political connotations, to end up conforming to a children's reading in our days.

I suppose that all of us at one time or another have read this unique odyssey set in that world of ships that sailed the seas in search of the last unknown places on the planet, a world with hints of modernity but at the same time still enmeshed with the esoteric, with trickery, with ancestral beliefs that linked the astronomical with the fantastic.

The original title that read "The trip to various remote nations of the world" associates the work more with the idea of ​​taking advantage of the adventure to offer the fable with its paradoxes and its morals.

But the most momentous journey that this work undertook ended up leading it towards the ratification of one more splendid example of the fantasy genre. Its four parts, from the first arrival in Lilliput to the last adventure in Houyhnhnms offer us an adjustment of the human being in the face of very different realities of each new discovered country.

And Gulliver, the doctor with the air of an adventurer, goes through adventures and learning. With each of the new journeys that Gulliver undertakes, we see a rich descriptive setting in front of worlds inhabited by dwarves, or by giants, or by horses and we enjoy the contrast with the reality of Gulliver's own world, our world, thanks to the rich exhibits that Gulliver moves in each of the new countries he visits.

Adventures in abundance await Gulliver at each new voyage and at each new landfall, delighting young and old.

Gulliver's Travels

Tale of a barrel

The possible disguise of children's narrative under which Jonathan Swift is currently hidden, is totally thwarted with works like this.

Allegorical in character and with a fabulous aspect, this book is a sharp satire in which the author gives a good account of religious currents (especially Calvinism) while pouring his strong opinions on the literary field of his time.

It is certainly appropriate to read this work with a broader consideration of the author's circumstances, but once approached that social and political environment, the enjoyment of the work is assured. Because the whole of the work offers flashes of creative freedom capable of attacking everything.

A work delivered to the imagination, to laughter, to mockery and extremely modern for its time, with that air of modernity that survives any society pigeonholed in complacency.

Tale of a barrel

A modest proposition

Under this title that invites an idea of ​​moderation or balanced negotiation, we finally navigate the frantic perception that everything is sarcasm, an irony that is born in the title and unfolds throughout the "supposed" essay that combines a sinister fiction with the no less dark reality...

Let me explain: In the end, the work tries to explain the relationship between his Ireland and England, delving into aspects such as the impossible disguise of the misery of a people capable of observing a rule that says about the consumption of babies if they cannot ensure their maintenance, as something typical of the times and of the pacts between nations.

There is certainly a lot of lurid, black humor. Reading this acid intention of the author can be surprising for a pen capable of writing Gulliver's travels. But of course, we must again consider that Gulliver's Travels was not intended to be a children's play. Surprise yourself with a "sociological proposal" of the first magnitude to free Ireland from the great problems of misery and begging.

A modest proposition
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