Gulliver's Travels (Oxford World's Classics)

Swift, Jonathan

ISBN 10: 0199536848 ISBN 13: 9780199536849

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2008

Synopsis

In Gulliver's Travels, the narrator represents himself as a reliable reporter of the fantastic adventures he has just experienced. But how far can we rely on a narrator who has been impersonated by someone else? The work purports to be a travel book, and describes the shipwrecked Gulliver's encounters with the inhabitants of four extraordinary places: Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the country of the Houyhnhnms. An extraordinarily skillful blend of fantasy and realism makes Gulliver's Travels by turns hilarious, frightening, and profound. Swift's alter ego plays tricks on us, and our gullibility uncovers one of the world's most disturbing satires of the human condition.

The fullest, most up-to-date paperback of Gulliver's Travels currently available, this new edition contains an astute analysis of the nature of Swift's satire. It includes the changing frontispiece portraits of Gulliver that appeared in successive early editions and whose subtle changes contribute to the reader's uncertainty about the veracity of the author. A new introduction by Claude Rawson draws on the latest scholarship and considers Swift's role-playing and the relationship of the author to Gulliver.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

About this title

About the Author

Claude Rawson and Ian Higgins are General Editors of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift in 16 volumes. Claude Rawson has written widely about satire and the Augustan period. He has edited Fielding's Jonathan Wild for OWC and is the author of God, Gulliver, and Genocide: Barbarism and the European Imagination 1492-1945 (OUP, 2001).

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199536848
• ISBN 13: 9780199536849
• Binding: Pocket Book
• Number of pages: 432
• Editor: Rawson Claude, Higgins Ian