Showing results by author "Jonathan Swift" in Genre Fiction

A Signature Performance: Four-time Emmy Award winner David Hyde Pierce delivers an air of lovable self-importance in his rendition of the classic social satire that remains as fresh today as the day it was published.

Andrew Sachs reads Jonathan Swift's humorous and unforgettable tale of a strange man in some very strange lands. Gulliver had always wanted to see the world. But whenever he steps on board a ship, bad luck always seems near at hand. He is shipwrecked, abandoned, marooned and mutinied against - and each time lands in a strange and curious place.

A savage and hilarious satire, Gulliver's Travels sees Lemuel Gulliver shipwrecked and adrift, subject to bizarre and unnerving encounters with - among others - quarrelling Lilliputians, philosophising horses, and the brutish Yahoo tribe that change his view of humanity - and himself - forever. Swift's classic of 1726 portrays mankind in a distorted hall of mirrors as a diminished, magnified, and finally, bestial species, presenting us with a comical yet uncompromising reflection of ourselves.

Lemuel Gulliver, a slightly staid ship’s doctor, relates the tales of his astonishing travels. He encounters the tiny, warring Lilliputians; the giant, sceptical Brobdingnagians; the ludicrously intellectual Laputans; and the idealistic - if rather stolid - Houyhnhnms and their bestial servants, the Yahoos. An immediate best seller when it was first published in 1726, Gulliver’s Travels has remained a favourite ever since. It was an attack on the politics and society of Swift’s day, but it is also a polemical, inventive, surreal, vitriolic, and wonderfully imaginative masterpiece.

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests in his essay that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling children as food. By doing this he mocks the authority of the British officials.

Dive into Jonathan Swift’s sharp satire in A Modest Proposal, one of literature’s most famous works of dark humor and social criticism. Written in 1729, Swift offers a shocking "solution" to the poverty and famine affecting Ireland, proposing the unthinkable with a calm, calculated rationale that highlights the cruelty and indifference of the ruling classes. Through biting irony, Swift forces readers to confront the realities of exploitation and dehumanization in society.

Set and written in 1726, This is a marvelously imaginative tale of the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver. He finds himself shipwrecked and the prisoner of captors ranging in size from 6 inches tall to 60 feet tall and of various other persuasions. But this is just the beginning of a story written, strangely enough to satirize the foolishness and vices of modern men as they were perceived at the time. No one, young or old, can ever forget the Lilliputians and the Yahoos that starred in these wonderful and riveting stories of long ago.

This classic book of English literature is an insightful satire on human nature, probing the corruption of man. It's also a parody on traveller's tales, as Jonathan Swift chronicles the voyages to Lilliput, Brobingnag, and other fantastical destinations in this powerful 18th-century masterpiece. Simon Cadell reads with a sure touch and great understanding of his subject.

"I Viaggi di Gulliver" (Gulliver's Travels) è un capolavoro della letteratura mondiale, un romanzo che coniuga fantasia e satira...

Jonathon Swift changed the way that prose was written forever, now for the first time ever you can listen to three of his best works collected in one bundle! Writing both fiction and satire, Jonathon Swift was noted for his poignant and often times cutting views of the society he lived in. He is still regarded as the most important prose satirist in the English language and is required reading in many schools.

Gulliver is shipwrecked on the Island of Lilliput where the natives are tiny people living in a miniature society. With his unique overview of this realm, Gulliver discovers a world of petty politics and small minds. Coerced into a war between two nations who disagree on the best way to eat boiled eggs, Gulliver finds himself betrayed by friends and battered by enemies - escape is his only option if he wants to survive! Gulliver's adventures in Lilliput are hilarious, disturbing and profound.

In 1729, Swift published A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick known today as A Modest Proposal. In this satire, Swift grotesquely suggests how the poor could solve the problem of their numerous families which they are struggling to feed.

A wickedly clever satire uses comic inversions to offer telling insights into the nature of man and society. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. Gulliver's Travels describes the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon. In Lilliput he discovers a world in miniature; towering over the people and their city, he is able to view their society from the viewpoint of a god. However, in Brobdingnag, a land of giants, tiny Gulliver himself comes under observation, exhibited as a curiosity at markets and fairs.

Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the philosophical Houyhnhnms, and the brutish Yahoos give him further insight into human behavior. Presented through Swift's satiric hall of distorting mirrors, mankind is cast as diminished, magnified, and bestial - the composite of which is an uncompromising reflection of human nature.

Gulliver's Travels is renowned as a playful and comic children's classic. The book itself, rather than the bowdlerized versions that have been derived from it, is a savage, rude and brilliant satire, timeless in its appeal and unerringly accurate.

Wickedly narrated by David Stifel, and written in 1729, this satiric essay on how to solve Ireland's chronic poverty is perhaps more shocking today than when it was written. In the 1960s, when Peter O'Toole did a public reading of this piece in Dublin, he very nearly started a riot. Newspapers the following day lambasted O'Toole's "shocking bad taste." Whether shocking satire, or Monty-Pythonesque surrealism, this essay has continually managed to offend people for well over 3 centuries. Enjoy! (and Thank You!)

One of the great literary classics of Western literature, Gulliver's Travels is a powerful satire on mankind, morals, and social habits, written in the form of a Travel in Wonderland.

The most celebrated novel by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) is a culmination of his active years in politics with the Whigs and then the Tories.

Jonathan Swift's classic novel about the loveable Lemuel Gulliver is one that is taught in high schools around the country, and for good reason. Gulliver, who is a surgeon aboard a ship, thinks that he is about to embark on a run-of-the-mill voyage to different ports. Throughout his journey, however, there are a few events that take place that redirect his ship to unfamiliar islands. Not only are they unfamiliar to him, but they are inhabited by natives who are shaped and sized much differently than he is.

Gulliver's Travels describes the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon. In Lilliput he discovers a world in miniature; towering over the people and their city, he is able to view their society from the viewpoint of a god. However, in Brobdingnag, a land of giants, tiny Gulliver himself comes under observation, exhibited as a curiosity at markets and fairs.

Gulliver's Travels is a classic satire on human nature and a parody of the "travelers' tales" literary genre. Lemuel Gulliver travels to the remote country of Lilliput where he encounters the six-inch-tall Lilliputians. On his next journey, he is captured by a 60-foot-tall native of Brobdingnag.