BookFeed Ελληνικά 1667–1745
Swift's prose is plain and quick, and the jokes are dry rather than loud: he lets a straight-faced narrator describe absurd customs until you laugh and then wince. Start with «Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World», where a ship's surgeon keeps washing up among miniature courtiers, giants, absent-minded scientists and rational horses, and each country shows human folly from a new angle; it gives you the whole range of his temper in one book.
Feels like society, power and humor.
Start with Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.
Swift published it anonymously in 1726. His publisher, Benjamin Motte, quietly cut and altered passages he feared were too dangerous, and the full text did not appear until a Dublin edition in 1735.
Five ways to start a war, none of them requiring a reason.
“Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of them shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither of them pretend to any right. Sometimes one prince quarrels with another for fear the other should quarrel with him. Sometimes a war is entered upon, because the enemy is too strong; and sometimes, because he is too weak. Sometimes our neighbours want the things which we have, or have the things which we want, and we both fight, till they take ours, or give us theirs. It is a very justifiable cause of a war, to invade a country after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence, or embroiled by factions among themselves. Jonathan Swift, 1726
A ship's surgeon keeps washing up among miniature courtiers, giants, absent-minded scientists and rational horses, and each country shows human folly from a new angle. It is still the sharpest satire in English.
Jonathan Swift, 1726
A ship’s surgeon washes up among tiny people, giants, flying scholars and talking horses, and discovers how strange his own country looks from outside.
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