Name: Liam Barry-Hayes
Student No: 13112481
Module No: EH4714
Title: Scatological preoccupations in Gulliver’s Travels establish the human body as a metaphor for the colonial body in the text. Discuss.
Mary Immaculate College
University of Limerick
Lecturer: Dr Maria Beville
Submitted to Mary Immaculate College: Date: .................
Declaration: I declare that this essay is all my own work and that I have acknowledged and referenced all sources of information I have used in the essay.
Signed: __________
Jonathan Swift’s four part fictional travel narrative — into Several Remote Nations of the World — is collectively known as Gulliver’s Travels 1726. Swift’s Gulliverian …show more content…
In doing so, Swift, not only exposes Gulliver’s enormous phallus to the vulnerable Empress he also compels the reader to imagine the arrogance and patriarchal nature of colonialism; Gulliver, having earlier consumed copious amounts of glimigrim, exclaims: ‘By the luckiest chance in the world. I had not discharged myself...the heat I had contracted by coming very near the flames, and by my labouring to quench them, made the wine begin to operate my urine’ (Swift, 1992, p. 54). Gulliver is not only subverting the authority of Lilliputian propriety he is also asserting himself, albeit unwittingly, as the dominant male, marking his territory; the significance of Gulliver’s display not lost on his nemesis Flimnap. A feminist reading, perhaps, might conclude that Gulliver’s phallocentric display symbolises the dependent female rescued by unashamed, swashbuckling, machismo; the ‘othering’ of the vagina by the colonial penis. Moreover, the violation of the empress and Gulliver’s subsequent punishment draw similar parallels to that of Oedipus. Having unwittingly violated his mother Jocasta, through incest, Oedipus, on hearing the truth gouges out his own eyes. Gulliver’s punishment for his violation, similarly, involves the act of blinding, albeit, at the behest of the lenient Emperor; much to the chagrin of the …show more content…
In a chamber in the academy Gulliver is reluctantly introduced to an aging, filth covered student, whose scientific vocation concerns the conversion of human faeces back into food: ‘...by separating the several parts; removing the tincture which it receives from the gall; making the odour exhale; and scumming off the saliva. He had a weekly allowance from the society, of a vessel filled with human ordure, about the bigness of a Bristol barrel’ (Swift, 1992, p. 192). The absurdity of this process is magnified by the fact that he is only allowed an allocated amount of excrement; no doubt originating from the aforementioned Laputian toilet. Swift’s Drapier’s Letters, published pseudonymously, shortly before Travels, was a direct criticism of the British parliament for granting William Wood the patent for minting Irish coins in Britain, not Ireland; this became known as the Woods Halfpenny Dispute. Swift felt the colonial British parliament were systematically undermining the integrity of the Irish parliament; surely the Balnibarbians are capable of turning their own shit back into
Student No: 13112481
Module No: EH4714
Title: Scatological preoccupations in Gulliver’s Travels establish the human body as a metaphor for the colonial body in the text. Discuss.
Mary Immaculate College
University of Limerick
Lecturer: Dr Maria Beville
Submitted to Mary Immaculate College: Date: .................
Declaration: I declare that this essay is all my own work and that I have acknowledged and referenced all sources of information I have used in the essay.
Signed: __________
Jonathan Swift’s four part fictional travel narrative — into Several Remote Nations of the World — is collectively known as Gulliver’s Travels 1726. Swift’s Gulliverian …show more content…
In doing so, Swift, not only exposes Gulliver’s enormous phallus to the vulnerable Empress he also compels the reader to imagine the arrogance and patriarchal nature of colonialism; Gulliver, having earlier consumed copious amounts of glimigrim, exclaims: ‘By the luckiest chance in the world. I had not discharged myself...the heat I had contracted by coming very near the flames, and by my labouring to quench them, made the wine begin to operate my urine’ (Swift, 1992, p. 54). Gulliver is not only subverting the authority of Lilliputian propriety he is also asserting himself, albeit unwittingly, as the dominant male, marking his territory; the significance of Gulliver’s display not lost on his nemesis Flimnap. A feminist reading, perhaps, might conclude that Gulliver’s phallocentric display symbolises the dependent female rescued by unashamed, swashbuckling, machismo; the ‘othering’ of the vagina by the colonial penis. Moreover, the violation of the empress and Gulliver’s subsequent punishment draw similar parallels to that of Oedipus. Having unwittingly violated his mother Jocasta, through incest, Oedipus, on hearing the truth gouges out his own eyes. Gulliver’s punishment for his violation, similarly, involves the act of blinding, albeit, at the behest of the lenient Emperor; much to the chagrin of the …show more content…
In a chamber in the academy Gulliver is reluctantly introduced to an aging, filth covered student, whose scientific vocation concerns the conversion of human faeces back into food: ‘...by separating the several parts; removing the tincture which it receives from the gall; making the odour exhale; and scumming off the saliva. He had a weekly allowance from the society, of a vessel filled with human ordure, about the bigness of a Bristol barrel’ (Swift, 1992, p. 192). The absurdity of this process is magnified by the fact that he is only allowed an allocated amount of excrement; no doubt originating from the aforementioned Laputian toilet. Swift’s Drapier’s Letters, published pseudonymously, shortly before Travels, was a direct criticism of the British parliament for granting William Wood the patent for minting Irish coins in Britain, not Ireland; this became known as the Woods Halfpenny Dispute. Swift felt the colonial British parliament were systematically undermining the integrity of the Irish parliament; surely the Balnibarbians are capable of turning their own shit back into