Reading Overview for Monday, July 12

Assigned Texts: Gulliver’s Travels (NA 998-1016)

As we continue reading Part 1 of Gulliver’s Travels, you will continue to see the representations of religion and politics that we discussed in class on Friday. Since we’ve discussed the background of the text rather extensively, I’ll just pose some questions for you to consider for our discussion on Monday.

Questions for Thinking and Discussion

• In the section on the nurseries for young boys and girls, Gulliver describes distinctions related to gender and class. How are women portrayed by Gulliver? And how are they treated within the Lilliputian society? In particular, how does the section about “the meaner families” relate to the issues raised in “A Modest Proposal”?
• As we discussed some in class on Friday, much of Gulliver’s story is humorous in addition to making important points about politics and religion in the 18th century. What parts of chapters 5-8 did you find funniest? Why did you think these parts were funny? Do you see any deeper meanings to these parts?
• In addition to the specific political and religious targets of Swift’s satire, many scholars see this text as a satire about human nature and human behavior more generally. What aspects of human nature are represented in chapters 5-8? How are these satirized?
• Returning to our focus on the body in this course, think about the ways the body appears in Part 1. How do the different types of bodies play a part in the text: the physical/human body? the national body? the foreign body?
• In his 1995 Jonathan Swift and the Burden of the Future, Alan D. Chalmers describes “anxiety of the body,” particularly in the first two parts of Gulliver’s Travels. About Gulliver’s body in Lilliput, Chalmers explains,

his body and its processes are painfully visible to everyone, everyone is looking at him and he can always be seen, even when asleep (indeed, when at rest he is most vulnerable—this is when they first came and crawled all over his body)….Gulliver’s alternating pride and shame in his body reflect a shifting identification with his world. And the worlds of Lilliput and Brobdingnag mock him most when his successful social adjustments lend him a feeling of physical identification with others. (91)

How do Gulliver’s lack of privacy in Lilliput and the visibility of his body impact his experience there? Do you agree with Chalmers that Gulliver has a need to adjust his body or his position to feel a sense of identification with those around him?

• More generally, what are your reactions to Part 1 of Gulliver’s Travels? Was it an enjoyable text to read? Why or why not?

Reading Overview for Friday, July 9

Assigned Text: Gulliver’s Travels (NA 976-98)

The first reading overview for our first day of class has some background information on the author of Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift, as well as some information about satire. Swift is known for his satirical work, and Gulliver’s Travels is considered a satirical novel. As the introduction in the NA points out, this novel was very popular when it was published and has remained popular in the centuries since then. Part of its appeal is the fact that Gulliver’s Travels appealed then (and arguably does today) to a range of audiences, from children who read it as a simple fantasy story to politicians who read it as a satire of the current political situation.

I’ve asked you to read the two letters that introduce the novel, but some context may help you to understand what they are about. As the NA explains,

Swift’s full title for this work was Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships. In the first edition (1726), either the bookseller or Swift’s friends…and others, who were concerned in getting the book anonymously into print, altered and omitted so much of the original mauscript (because of its dangerous political implications) that Swift was seriously annoyed. (975)

The 1735 text includes these two introductory letters, as Swift takes on the persona of Gulliver to complain about the earlier version. The text included in the NA is from this 1735 edition.

Though we’re only reading the first part of Gulliver’s Travels, it might help you to have an understanding of the text as a whole, which includes three other voyages after his visit to Lilliput in Part 1. In Part 2, Gulliver ends up in Brobdingnag, which is a land of giants that is ruled by a wise prince, who talks with Gulliver about the government of England. The distinction between the utopia of Brobdingnag and the problems in England are where the satire of this part really becomes clear as Gulliver begins to question his homeland. In Part 3, Gulliver ends up in Laputa, which is a flying island, whose inhabitants are focused on the pursuit of knowledge and music to an extreme. This part satirizes the Royal Society of England, which also tended to blindly pursue the knowledge of science and math in the eighteenth century. After a few detours on his journey home, Gulliver leaves again, in Part 4, where he encounters the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent and reasonable horses, and the Yahoos, dull and deformed human beings that serve the Houyhnhnms. Here, the way that the Yahoos lack reason and follow only their passions disgusts Gulliver, as he prefers to consider himself associated with the Houyhnhnms. He is expelled from this land and returns again to England where the novel ends with him becoming a recluse from other humans and distancing himself from his family though he spends several hours each day in conversation with the horses in his stable.

Questions for Thinking and Discussion

• Compare the introductory letter from Gulliver to the opening paragraphs of Oroonoko. What is similar about their emphasis on the reality of the narratives they are sharing? What is different?
• Readers of Gulliver’s Travels are often split on their views of Gulliver. While some quickly become impatient with him or completely dislike him, others find him relatable, interesting, and/or humorous. Based on the first four chapters of Part 1, what are your thoughts on our narrator, Lemuel Gulliver?
• Thinking about “A Modest Proposal,” which offers a satirical plan for dealing with the issue of the large (and growing) Irish population, how do you see the issue of size playing a role in this text?
• What is your take on the Lilliputian beliefs about eggs? How does the description of the beliefs and rules about eggs relate to religion in this period?

Reading Overview for Thursday, July 8

Assigned Texts: Oroonoko (NA 947-71)

In the second section of Oroonoko, we encounter much more description of the slave trade. As your classmates shared, the slave trade developed in the 1400s when Portugal began trading slaves with northern and western Africa. Before this time, there was already an active system of slavery in Africa among tribes as they fought one another. This system was quite different from the trans-Atlantic trade in that the slaves within Africa were generally treated with more respect whereas those traded to Europeans were dehumanized. We see an example of the African system of slavery in Oroonoko’s relationship with Jamoan. By the 1600s, the Dutch and English were heavily involved in the slave trade as they acquired workers for the sugar plantations in the ‘new world.’ Here’s a brief excerpt about Surinam around the time that Oroonoko takes place:

The colonial history of Surinam really began in the middle of the 17th century when a fort was constructed by the British at the site that would later become the capital, Paramaribo. Sugar plantations were the initial economic incentive and 2000 African slaves were brought by ship to provide labour.

Control was ceded to the Dutch in the mid-1660s and the colony became the centre of Dutch slave trading. Even by the standards of the day, this was a viciously brutal territory with a high mortality rate, and despite the importation of some 300,000 slaves over 150 years, the population of the colony never totalled more than 50,000 people. Beyond the sadistic and murderous habits of the plantation owners, a large number of slaves escaped to form permanent inland (maroon) communities that waged a guerilla war against the Dutch community for nearly a century (these maroon communities still exist today).

This information comes from a blog about the slave trade and Surinam that focuses on the account of Captain John Stedman who was in Surinam in the 1770s, about a century after Behn was there. The blog about Stedman’s descriptions and the images he produced might be of interest to you.

As the introduction to Behn in the NA explains, Behn’s experience in Surinam in 1664 shaped much of this narrative. Many of the aspects of the slave trade, including the methods for acquiring and selling slaves, the treatment and torture of the slaves, and the locations described. As you will notice in the footnotes, many of the people described in Surinam are based on actual people who lived on these plantations and Behn met during her time there. Still, as we discussed in class, there are definitely parts of the story that have been fictionalized, which complicates the categorization of the text.

The beginning of today’s reading is during the Middle Passage as the ship travels from Coramantien to Surinam. As one group explained, the term Middle Passage derives from the place on the ship where the slaves were held. It also refers to the fact that the journey across the Atlantic was the middle segment of a three-part journey from Europe to Africa, then from Africa to the ‘new world’, and then from the ‘new world’ back to Europe. Much of the action, though, takes place in Surinam, on the north coast of South America. We find out much more about the natives of Surinam and about the Europeans living and running the plantations there. One group found an online copy of Edmund S. Morgan's, American Slavery American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia helpful, and they noted "particularly Section 15, Towards Slavery, where they discussed the techniques the white slave owners would use in order to keep the blacks from gaining freedom." Another group found this website interesting and helpful.

Questions for Thinking and Discussion

• Our reading for the first day included quite a bit of background on Oroonoko and events in Coramantien. What is the effect of the first half of the story? Does it change the way you read the parts set in Surinam?
• Have your responses changed to these questions from yesterday? If so, how? If not, why do you think not?
• Based on the first half of Oroonoko, what do you think is the narrator’s opinion of slavery? Is she clearly against it? Is she ambivalent?
• Do you see Oroonoko as honorable? What does he do that would make him honorable? dishonorable?
• We talked some in class about how Behn gives several descriptions of Oroonoko that relate his appearance to her European audience. As the narrative continues, what else do you notice that Behn does for her European (mostly English) audience?
• How does the narrator describe the three main groups in Surinam? The Europeans? The slaves? The natives?
• A number of critics have expressed frustration and disappointment with the ending of Oroonoko. How do you feel about the ending? Was it satisfactory? If so, why? If not, what would you have like for Behn to include?

Reading Overview for Wednesday, July 7

Assigned Texts: Oroonoko (NA 927-47)

Yesterday’s overview gave you some background on the author of Oroonoko, Aphra Behn, but this prose narrative is quite different from her poem “The Disappointment.” Since we didn’t discuss Behn in class, please look back at yesterday’s post for details and background about her.

As the introduction to Behn in the NA suggests, this text is somewhat difficult to categorize mostly because it is shorter than a novel and unclear whether it’s real or fiction. Behn was in Suriname, a sugar colony in the northern part of South America, in the 1660s, so it’s likely that the story is based, in some part, on real events. Still, the narrative appears to exaggerate her social position as a visitor to the colony and likely enhances other details. This, combined with some of the other details, means that we cannot read the first-person narrator telling the story as Behn herself though she drew on some actual experiences. Behn wrote this text late in her career, and it was popular enough to have been rewritten a number of times in the decades after Behn’s publication of it. Here is a map that indicates three main locations: England (or 'old world'), Coramantien (in modern-day Ghana), and Surinam (now known as Suriname).

Oroonoko takes up the important issue of slavery and centers on a black male hero. As the NA introduction explains, the narrative incorporates the qualities of three genres:

• the memoir: the narrator’s descriptions describe a significant first-hand experience
• the travel narrative: the action and characters move between Africa, the ‘new world’ in the west, and the ‘old world’ of Europe
• biography: the narrative tells the life story of the protagonist and titular character Oroonoko

As you begin reading, I’ll warn you that parts of Oroonoko are shocking and horrifying, but these aspects are very important in Behn’s descriptions of the impact of slavery in her lifetime.

Questions for Thinking and Discussion

• Based on the first half of Oroonoko, what do you think is the narrator’s opinion of slavery? Is she clearly against it? Is she ambivalent?
• Do you see Oroonoko as honorable? What does he do that would make him honorable? dishonorable? Why?
• Before the actual story starts around the middle of page 930, the narrator gives some background on her experience and on the slave trade as well as on the natives living in the ‘new world’. What is the effect of these introductory sections? Of the description of her experience on the bottom of page 927 and the top of 928? Of the description of the current situation around the ‘new world’ and slave trade on pages 928 through 930?
• Which character do you find most sympathetic through the first half of the story: Oroonoko, the King, Imoinda, the narrator, or someone else? Why? Who do you find least sympathetic? Why?