Jonathan Swift, misanthropy, and "The Voyage to The Land of The Houyhnhnms"

Abstract

One of the prizes for the 2018 Undergraduate Research Paper Contest was awarded for this paper by Autumn McLain.

From the first paragraph: "Since Gulliver's Travels was first published, readers and critics have disagreed over whether it showed that its author, Jonathan Swift, hated humanity or not. Gulliver himself ends the book with an extreme hatred of and disgust for mankind, but it is unclear whether he reflects Swift's thoughts or not. In his letters, Swift continuously flaunts his disdain for humanity, but also undermines it at every turn. By closely reading his correspondence as a whole, an understanding of his motives for writing and his feelings about humanity can be reached which can in turn inform a reading of his texts which seem to defy interpretation. Swift's constant contradictions and qualifications of his disdain for humanity serve as evidence of the fact that Swift was not a misanthrope, though he was an occasionally hateful man and one who wished to appear as a misanthrope."