Lilliput and Leprecan: Gulliver and the Irish Tradition
1945; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 12; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/2871623
ISSN1080-6547
Autores Tópico(s)Irish and British Studies
ResumoNo one is likely to underestimate the effects of Irish misery upon the intellectual stand Swift took in the 1720's. The deliberate horror of the Yahoo world grows all too clearly from the cool play of reason upon the sub-human conditions of the natives. And yet, during the years preceding Gulliver, when the Travels were growing according to the mysterious ways of creation in the mind and heart of a living man, Swift was equally open to another influence as omnipresent as Irish suffering,-the influence of the Irish imagination. In considering his place in the Irish scene, we have, perhaps, paid too little attention to this second force. The country of his long exile may have given him more than the materials for expression: sometimes it may have suggested the manner as well. For if the last book of Gulliver owes its power to an indignation of the mind,-a rational rather than an emotional reaction to injustice,-perhaps the first owes much of its charm to Swift's partial surrender to a spirit not entirely his own. As he reluctantly became the champion of an alien people, he may as unwittingly have drawn from an alien tradition. The poverty of the Irish pressed upon him from every side, but no less real for being unseen was the influence of their creative genius. The air was alive with stories both oral and written, marked by a humor often as grim as Swift's own, by similar juxtapositions of the fantastic and the actual, and by singular brilliance of expression. In a country where many were bilingual, where many were eager to share this living tradition, it would be difficult for anyone to escape this force entirely, however much he may have affected to despise it. I believe that the adventures in Lilliput, and to a lesser degree those in Brobdingnag, show Swift very close indeed to the Celtic spirit. Two dominant themes in Irish literature, evident from the beginning and persisting into our own times, reveal the Celtic preoccupation with the very little and the very big. From
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