·
CLASS
: M.A
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SEM
: 1
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TOPIC
: Secret Memories of Lemuel Gulliver ; Secrecy , Satire & Swift
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YEAR
: 2016-2018
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EMAIL
ID : amitrivedi4288@gmail.com
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SUBMITTED
TO : SMT .S.B. Gardi Department of English & M.K. Bhavnagar University
LANGUAGE IN THE SATIRICAL
JOURNEY :
As a Lemuel Gulliver and candied traverse
their respective worlds, each finds himself haunted by linguistic failure. In
Justin Lievano’s article “After Eden:
Gulliver’s Travels.” Ann Cline Kelly argues that,
“Gulliver’s
Travels presented a Journey in search of
“Edenic Linguistic Purity”
As a tool of satire, the usage of language within these
novels satisfies Northrop Frye’s rendering of the satirical mode in his “Anatomy of
Criticism”. Both Swift & Voltaire utilize the humorous
incongruity of their character’s Communicative shortcomings to censure those
who would misinterpret language, Swift targets the misplaced aims of language
reformers ,and Voltaire targets pansophs, philosophers who claim to know all
& support their ideologies with empty rhetoric.
During Gulliver’s time in “more
& more as an animal as he progresses in Linguistic knowledge” a trend that culminates in the king of
Brobdingnag’s evaluation as “The most pernicious race of odious little
vermin nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of earth”.
IT LOOKED AS IF THERE
WERE A SECRET HISTORY :
Between 1650 and 1800, more than 500
editions were published with “Secret
history” in their titles. This new category of historiography permits
special license: “memories” are partial and personal the words “anecdote” and
“secret” literally mean unpublished or unpublishable.
Secret history offered “those sorts of Relation, which they fancy
containing something more secret and particular, than is to be found in the
public newspapers.”
To seventeenth and early eighteenth
century readers, however the manuscript effectively struck a never. Here was a
story with elements conveniently parallel to current events; a Victorious
monarch, a powerful royal mistress, a brilliant but possibly mercenary military
leader with a beautiful, high profile, ambitious wife, a privileged ruling
class associated with sexual misconduct; and a setting rife with political
faction and economic expansion.
Secret history has attracted scholars
for seemingly contradictory reasons. In an investigation of the origins of
early modern liberalism, secret history gives voice to Whig polemics during the
restoration in the work of male writers like Sir William Temple, Andrew Marvell
and Gilbert Burnet.
In feminist investigation of the
eighteenth century novel, amatory secret history by Troy women writers like
Behan Manley and Haywood is the naughty ancestor to respectable fiction. In the
first case, secret history seems progressive, encouraging middle-class moral outrage
at failures in the lives of rulers and asserting ideals such as free speech and
the citizen’s right to know. In the second case, it seems conservation,
encouraging aristocratic pleasure in voyeurism and libertinism and tempting
readers with forbidden sexual indulgence.
“Must never to mankind be told, nor shall the conscious muse unfold”-
Swift and Secrecy
From the early “Sublime Mysteries” of “A Tale of Tub”
to the late scatological “Secrets of the Hoary Deep” in “The Ladies
Dressing-Room”, from ephemeral riddles for his friends to
interpretive enigmas in Gulliver’s Travels , Swift’s work exhibits a
fascination with secrecy. The autobiographical fragment “The Family of Swift” suggests that he inherited a
tendency towards stealth, or at least that he identified most strongly with
those of his ancestors who were adept at it.
The extent of his attachment to Vanessa,
swift wrote, “To the world a Secret yet…Must never to
mankind be told, nor shall the conscious Muse unfold”. In other
circumstances, secrets can be means of self-preservation, “His
watchful Friends preserve him by a Sleight” when they conceal
his identity as author of “The public spirit of the wigs ” for
which Harley had , “Secretly sent him 100 pounds to reimburse
the printer & the publisher”
In “The Author
Upon Himself” Swift imagines his enemy Daniel Finch jealous of
his friendship with Harley : “He hears for certain /This
dangerous priest is got behind the curtain.. that Swift oils many a spring
which Harley moves .”
Swift’s colleague Manley combined gossip, slander
& secret history in political satire in which women sometimes manipulate
power. Swift pursues this idea. Women who attend the Queen & dangerously
inscrutable Swift’s journal & correspondence also brim with gossip and
secrets : “Oh,
I could tell you Ten Thousand things of our mad politics, upon what small
circumstances great affairs have turned.”
In Gulliver’s Travels, one man narrates different versions of
the state of England in what amounts to an ironic cooptation of secret
memories.
Secret Memories of Lemuel Gulliver Swift’s Version of History.
“Gullible”
Gulliver, often a wide eyed & frank reporter, at first seems an
unlikely figure to associate with stealth & mystery. But Swift’s ironic protagonist
charts a journey into a world of Gulliver’s Travels. Gulliver leaves England in
1699 & except for engaged with his family, does not return until 1715
v 1st Voyage :
On the first voyage,
Lilliputian authorities operate by stealth.Redresal is “Principal Secretary…of
Private Affairs.” Gulliver is thoroughly searched and with difficulty manages
to conceal one “secret pocket”, “Court Scandal” and “the Malice of evil
tongues” run rampant and Gulliver is victimized several times by “private
intrigue.”
v 2nd Voyage :
The king of Brobdingnag proves his worth
by “professing both to abominate and despise all mystery, refinement and
intrigue. He could not tell what I meant by secrets of state.” When Gulliver
attempts to win his esteem by reveling the formula for gunpowder, the king
objects that,
“he would rather lose half his
kingdom than be privy to such a secret, which he commanded me, as I valued my
life, never to mention any more.”
3rd voyage :
On third voyage the issue of Secrecy is
more complex. Balnibarbi is full of caves, a topography conducive to hiding
things, but it is inhabited by a population distinguished by its incapacity for
keeping confidence. When persons arc accused of a plot,
“effectual care
is taken to secure all their letters and papers. These papers are delivered to
a set of artists very dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of
words, syllables and letters.”
4th Voyage :
This voyage is equally if not more
profoundly concerned with the human penchant for keeping breaking, and sharing
secrets. In Houyhnhnmland, Gulliver himself is urgently caught up in the
concealment of his Yahoo identity.
Here the distinctive “natural” human
characteristic is not the capacity for handcraft, but for concealment or
secrecy. Swift complicates the fundamental Judeo-Christian association of
nekedness and shame: people have fallen not simply into morality but into a
tangle of pleasure and anxiety, scandal and desire that constitute the
competing stories of the human race.
The four version of English history in
Gulliver’s Travels are influenced by Swift’s “continued preoccupation with the
study of history.” History is rather as mercurial and vexing as any other human
endeavor; Swift represents it as a “dark art” in Gulbdubdrib. The past is not
fixed and dead but restless and malleable constantly interact.
Gulliver’s Travels mentions “Anecdotes,
or Secret History” in a chapter set in Balnibarbi called “Ancient and Modern
History Corrected.” We know that the third voyage was written last and
interested as preparation for the devastating effects of the final voyage to
Houyhnhnmland.
The concept of history is probed within a
pattern of irony that dominates the third voyage. Critics have noted the
distinctive way in which the reader is set up to anticipate a certain judgment
or interpretation, only to find that Swift’s irony has shifted terms or changed
the rules of his satiric game.
History in Gulbdubdrib is the
counterpart to, or the antithesis of, immortality, the voyage’s ultimate hope.
One reaches endlessly into the imaginable past, the “Beginning of the world.”
While the other endures into the endless future.” Both are populated by the
living dead; ghosts and struldbruggs.
History of the third voyage is a kind of
virtual reality in which Gulliver can summon and interact with “whatever number
among all the dead from the beginning of the world to the present time.”He
begins in idealism about the Ancients,
“Vast numbers
of Illustrations persons were called up. I chiefly fed my eyes with beholding
the Destroyers of Tyrants and Usurpers and the Restorers of Liberty to
oppressed and injured nations.”
The fourth voyage also includes two
versions of history: Gulliver’s third version of his own time, from the Glorious
Revolution to Anne’s reign; and the Houyhnhnm’s comparative history of the
Yahoos. Gulliver now condemns all aspects of England indicting government, low,
religion, medicine, commerce, education, class and war with vivid details: the
legal dispute over; comer ship of the cow; exploded body parts as a diversion
of war.
Site:
www.researchgate.net
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