英國文學選讀uppt課件-資料下載頁
2025-05-03 05:07本頁面
【正文】 the ruin brought about by blind pursuit of science without practical results in a satire on the Royal Society and its experiments. He also encounters the struldbrugs, unfortunates who are immortal and very, very old. He travels to a magician39。s dwelling and discusses history with the ghosts of historical figures, the most obvious restatement of the ancients versus moderns theme in the book. The trip is otherwise reasonably free of incident and Gulliver returns home, determined to stay there for the rest of his days. [edit] Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms Despite his earlier intention of remaining at home, Gulliver returns to sea where his crew was captured by Dutch and Japanese pirates in order to force them to bee pirates also. He is abandoned in a landing boat and es first upon a race of (apparently) hideous deformed creatures to which he conceives a violent antipathy. Shortly thereafter he meets a horse and es to understand that the horses (in their language Houyhnhnm or the perfection of nature) are the rulers and the deformed creatures (Yahoos) are human beings in their basest form. Gulliver bees a member of the horse39。s household, and es to both admire and emulate the Houyhnhnms and their lifestyle, rejecting human beings as merely Yahoos endowed with some semblance of reason which they only use to exacerbate and add to the vices Nature gave them. However, an Assembly of the Houyhnhnms rules that Gulliver, a Yahoo with some semblance of reason, is a danger to their civilization and he is expelled. He is then rescued, against his will, by a Portuguese ship that returns him to his home in England. However, he is unable to reconcile himself to living among Yahoos。 he bees a recluse, remaining in his house, largely avoiding his family, and spending several hours a day speaking with the horses in his stables. The book finishes with a peroration against pride that is ironically boastful, and seems to be intended to show that Gulliver39。s reason may have turned. Others argue that Swift39。s point is that the basic difference between humans and the Yahoos is largely artifice. However, no definite answer is forthing from the text, and critics have argued this point for years. It is interesting that this fourth voyage seems to have most engaged literary critics over the years. Some readers chose to see it as proof of Swift39。s incipient mental deterioration (he suffered from an innerear disorder which led contemporaries, and Swift himself, to question his sanity). Most famously, William Thackeray described it as filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging and obscene although he did live in a more prudish time (1853). Thank you for learning
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