Explore the struggle between the individual and society in 'Gulliver 's Travels ' and 'Pastoralia '
'Principally, ' wrote Jonathan Swift in a 1725 letter, 'I hate and detest that animal called man... upon this great foundation of misanthropy the whole building of my Travels is erected '. Such cynicism is hardly surprising from a writer such as Swift, whose whole corpus is marked by its acerbic and critical tone. As Gravil put it, Swift 's genius was a 'radical scepticism ', one that often-times put him at odds with his fellows, who were utterly entrenched in the intellectual optimism of the Enlightenment. What perhaps may be more unexpectedly gleaned from Swift 's correspondence is his focus on how the 'Travels ' relate to the human condition as a whole, …show more content…
The years before Pastoralia 's publication in 2000 were marked by political tension, in the Middle East and elsewhere. As an American, Saunders would have been surrounded by reminders of the broken relationship between state and citizen; for instance, President Bill Clinton was impeached and there was a record rise in the use of the death penalty. More significantly, there was an increase in the power of the individual. The Dot-Com bubble lead to a new class of powerful entrepreneurs, and the continuing popularity of neo-liberalism shifted power away from the government and into the hands of the private sector. This environment of change in many ways mirrors that of the Enlightenment, in which Humanist principles lead to the rejection of the collectivism that had defined the preceding centuries. The Rationalist doctrine of Enlightenment intellectuals insisted on the rejection of the need for religion or state to provide a moral code; instead, the individual had inherent worth, enough to define his own place in society. Both periods lead to a new class of self-made men, and the erosion of a feeling of obligation to the state that many had had
'Principally, ' wrote Jonathan Swift in a 1725 letter, 'I hate and detest that animal called man... upon this great foundation of misanthropy the whole building of my Travels is erected '. Such cynicism is hardly surprising from a writer such as Swift, whose whole corpus is marked by its acerbic and critical tone. As Gravil put it, Swift 's genius was a 'radical scepticism ', one that often-times put him at odds with his fellows, who were utterly entrenched in the intellectual optimism of the Enlightenment. What perhaps may be more unexpectedly gleaned from Swift 's correspondence is his focus on how the 'Travels ' relate to the human condition as a whole, …show more content…
The years before Pastoralia 's publication in 2000 were marked by political tension, in the Middle East and elsewhere. As an American, Saunders would have been surrounded by reminders of the broken relationship between state and citizen; for instance, President Bill Clinton was impeached and there was a record rise in the use of the death penalty. More significantly, there was an increase in the power of the individual. The Dot-Com bubble lead to a new class of powerful entrepreneurs, and the continuing popularity of neo-liberalism shifted power away from the government and into the hands of the private sector. This environment of change in many ways mirrors that of the Enlightenment, in which Humanist principles lead to the rejection of the collectivism that had defined the preceding centuries. The Rationalist doctrine of Enlightenment intellectuals insisted on the rejection of the need for religion or state to provide a moral code; instead, the individual had inherent worth, enough to define his own place in society. Both periods lead to a new class of self-made men, and the erosion of a feeling of obligation to the state that many had had