Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift :: English Literature

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels in the 1720's, he wrote it in a different style to modern authors because it was more normal in those days to do so; for example, he used more pompous and archaic words, longer sentences and longer paragraphs; Swift also used a lot of Satire and imaginary words in his book these made it more interesting and more believable. Nowadays his writing might sound strange to some people. I have been looking closely at the satire and style in chapter five of Gulliver's Travels and will comment on how he used them and what his intended effect was. In chapter five Swift uses archaic language such as, 'Viceroy,' when he wrote this I think he was just writing what came naturally to him, he didn't desire an effect to be created on the reader other than what the word meant; nowadays the archaic words he uses could create the effect of boredom or confusion, because the reader might not know what the words mean. Some of the words Swift uses are formal and pompous an example of one of these words is, 'Leathern Jerkin,' This is a posh word for a leather coat, it's effect on the reader is it shows them that Gulliver is a well educated man who has a wide vocabulary. I believe that this was swift's intention. This is the affect as it had on me as a reader. In the whole book there are a lot of long paragraphs longer than you would normally find in a book today. These can make the book hard for some people to read and it can also make the reader forget what beginning of the paragraph was before they finish it; however some modern books have long paragraphs as well, (I read a book recently and it had lots of long paragraphs which made the story very hard to keep track of and understand). I don't think Swift intended to confuse his readers but he might have confused some of them. Swift also used very long sentences throughout this novel an example of one from chapter five is, 'I had not yet seen it, and upon this notice of an intended invasion, I avoided appearing on that side of the coast, for fear of being discovered by some of the enemy's ships, who had received no intelligence of me, all intercourse between the two empires having been strictly forbidden during the war, upon pain of death, and an embargo laid by our Emperor upon all vessels whatsoever.' As you can see that is a very long sentence that probably