PURITY AND DEFILEMENT IN GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

Transcription

1 PURITY AND DEFILEMENT IN GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

2 Also by Charles H. Hinnant THOMAS HOBBES THOMAS HOBBES: a Reference Guide

3 Purity and Defilement in Gulliver's Travels Charles H. Hinnant Professor of English University of Missouri M MACMILLAN PRESS

4 Charles H. Hinnant 1987 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in an accordance with the provision of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1987 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Hinnant, Charles H. Purity and defilement in Gulliver's travels. 1. Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's travels I. Title 823'.5 PR3724.G8 ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI /

5 For Susan, Katherine and Amanda

6 Contents Preface ix 1 Introduction 1 2 The First Voyage: Purity and the Politics of Fear 18 3 The Brobdingnagian King and the Abomination of Creeping Things 31 4 The System at War with Itself: the Quest for Purity in the Third Voyage 53 5 Nature Versus Culture: the Fourth Voyage of Gulliver's Travels 72 6 'Not in Timon's Manner': the Conclusion of Gulliver's Travels 92 ~~ 100 Index 112 vii

7 Preface This book started out as a defence of the way Jonathan Swift pictures the body in Gulliver's Travels and ended up as a new mode of thinking about the text as a whole. I began to read Swift's imaginary voyages in terms of their concern with purity and defilement and inevitably found myself dealing with a number of related yet distinct issues that included politics, technology, science and history. What links these issues to the central theme of the book is a perspective that is perhaps best described as anthropological. In so far as such a perspective is justified in relation to Gulliver's Travels, it is because the discipline of anthropology itself can be traced back to the early modern travel literature that provided the context and impetus for Swift's masterpiece. Hence it is my hope that this book will not be seen as an attempt to superimpose the vocabulary of a modern field of thought upon a classic text that is clearly alien to it. Rather it is an effort to recover aspects of the text that might be obscured from view in a criticism that is oblivious to the terminology and assumptions of that field. The starting point of this effort at recovery is the hypothesis that impurity is best understood in Gulliver's Travels, not in a contemporary psychological or hygienic sense, but rather in relation to rational norms and categories. In every voyage the impure is what escapes categories or threatens their existence; the unclean is the anomalous, the ambiguous or the monstrous. Not that this should be viewed as a purely theoretical matter. It is a central contention of the book that each of the societies Gulliver visits establishes its own particular standards of purity and defilement. If it is preoccupied with threats to its security, a society formulates rules about purity which mirror these fears. In such rules, what leaves and enters bodily orifices is often made the symbolic focus for anxieties concerning what leaves and enters the body politic. Considerations of this kind are used to offer an explanation of the different ways purity and impurity are opposed to one another in all four voyages of Gulliver's Travels. But in its final form the book tries to do more than seek to shift the angle of incidence from which we observe Swift's abomination of filth and corruption; it also seeks to bring into focus specific issues which arise as a ix

8 X Preface consequence of its special emphasis on purity and defilement. These issues include such considerations as the contrasting models of Oriental despotism projected in the first and third Voyages, the conception of parasitism implied in the Brobdingnagian king's denunciation of man as a race of 'pernicious vermin', and the way in which the Yahoos are related ethnographically to the Houyhnhnms in the fourth Voyage. In singling out these issues, I do not wish to exclude consideration of the humour that is so important a part of the appeal of Gulliver's Travels. Indeed, humour is an inseparable part of our response to what appears strange or anomalous in terms of rational categories. As a comic counterpart of the awe that we experience in the presence of the abnormal, the non-natural or the holy, humour arises from our perception of what seems anomalous or ludicrous in ordinary life. In Gulliver's Travels, humour emerges from the structural transformations by which the narrative thwarts our commonly-held expectations about systems of ordering and classification. These transformations are never lost sight of and are constantly being recalled by humorous conceits: by the rumour of Gulliver's liaison with the minister's wife, by the tiny animals that threaten his existence among the Brobdingnagians, by the discomfort which arises from his effort to live in the stables with the horses upon his return to England from Houyhnhnmland. In these and other episodes, humour emerges from the violation of boundaries and categories. The absurdity of these violations does not nullify the serious issues raised in these episodes so much as to render them acceptable to an audience disposed to be entertained as well as enlightened. Though I have been reading and teaching Gulliver's Travels for a number of years, much of the thinking that went into this book depends upon sources that lie well outside the precincts of my own chosen area of expertise. Hence it is particularly incumbent upon me to acknowledge the extent of my intellectual indebtedness. In particular, I would like to express my gratitude to my friend and colleague, the late Robert Somers of the University of Missouri department of history, who provided me with valuable ideas and information about the controversy surrounding Karl Wittfogel's Oriental Despotism. Here too I should acknowledge the useful advice of an anonymous reviewer who wrote a report on the manuscript for the University Press of Kentucky and whose comments helped to give the argument a better perspective. Among

9 Preface xi influences too numerous to mention, I must particularly cite that of Mary Douglas whose Purity and Danger was invaluable in assisting me to understand how the idea of purity might be approached in rational terms. Thanks, finally, to John McCormick of the University of Missouri Office of Research for providing financial assistance in defraying the costs of zeroxing, packaging and mailing the manuscript of my book. All citations in the text to Gulliver's Travels refer to: Herbert Davis (ed.), Gulliver's Travels, 1726 in The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, 24 vols (Oxford: Basil Blackwell) IX, 29. University of Missouri C. H. H.

10 It seems to me that objects in themselves are neither pure nor impure. I cannot think of any quality inherent to the subject which could make them such. Mud appears dirty to us only because it wounds our vision or some other of our senses. Of itself, it is not more soiled than gold or diamonds. Montesquieu, Persian Letters, Letter 17