Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ by Jonathan Swift

Close Readings

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Jonathan Swift’s 1726 tale of Houyhnhnms, Yahoos, Lilliputians and Struldbruggs is normally seen as a satire. But what if it’s read as fantasy, and all its contradictions, inversions and reversals as an echo of the traditional starting point of Arabic fairytale: ‘It was and it was not’? In this episode Marina and Anna Della discuss Gulliver’s Travels as a text in which empiricism and imagination are tightly woven, where fantastical realms are created to give different perspectives on reality and both writer and reader are liberated from having to decide what to think.

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Further reading in the LRB:

Terry Eagleton:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n16/terry-eagleton/a-spot-of-firm-government

Clare Bucknell: Oven-Ready Children

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n02/clare-bucknell/oven-ready-children

Thomas Keymer: Carry Up your Coffee Boldly

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n08/thomas-keymer/carry-up-your-coffee-boldly

Next episode: Marco Polo’s Il Milione and Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.

Marina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB.

Anna Della Subin’s study of men who unwittingly became deities, Accidental Gods, was published in 2022. She has been writing for the LRB since 2014.

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