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Trompe l'Oeil: Gulliver and the Distortions of the Observing Eye

1984; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 53; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3138/utq.53.2.160

1712-5278

David Oakleaf,

History of Science and Medicine

Lemuel Gulliver, the narrator of Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, is obviously an observer. The very title of his narrative appeals to popular interest in observations brought back from voyages of exploration—voyages that represent a geographical conquest of space contemporary with Europe's mathematical conquest of space during the seventeenth-century scientific revolution. Peering through windows and eye glasses and perspective glasses, Gulliver observes both nature and manners. He observes natural curiosities, donating some giant wasp stings to Gresham College. He observes new lands, suggesting alterations to the world's maps. He observes courts and a public execution and a learned society, bringing back the plan of a machine to generate speculative knowledge mechanically. Finally, he publishes his observations, quarrelling with his critics as he does so. No fellow of the Royal Society could do more. Nevertheless, distortion is a more obvious feature of the Travels than the transparent record of experience recommended by that Society. Johnson'S dismissive comment that 'once you have thought of big men and little men, it is very easy to do all the rest' suggests that the book is based on systematic distortion; this implies that its exploration of science goes beyond its specific satire of the Royal Society and Cartesianism in book III. Surprisingly often, the Travels confronts the reader with the act of observation itself, emphasizing not only perspective glasses and empirical scepticism about the evidence of the senses but also, centrally, the dislocations of point of view inherent in observation.