Swift's Laputians as a Caricature of the Cartesians
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23230555 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Renaker (San Francisco State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1979 |
| Volume | 94 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 936-944 |
| Publication date | 1979-10-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0030-8129 • E-ISSN: 1938-1530 |
| Publisher | Modern Language Association (MLA) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/461975 |
| OpenAlex | W2324217045 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
The prevalent view that Book III of Gulliver’s Travels satirizes the Royal Society overlooks the fact that this book contains two satires, one on the Laputians and one on the Balnibarbians. The first of these satires gains point if we regard it as aimed at the Cartesians, interpreting Laputa as France, the land of the Cartesians, and Balnibarbi as England, the land of the Newtonians, characterizations made by Voltaire in his Lettres philosophiques. The Laputians’ fear of the extinction of the sun is fully justified by the cosmology of Descartes’s Principes ; their musical mania exaggerates only slightly that of the Cartesian popularizer Marin Mersenne; their influence on the Balnibarbians, inspiring them to build the Academy of Lagado, represents the influence of Descartes on the Royal Academy, an influence that has been hitherto underestimated.
Art · Art history · Astrophysics · Literature · Mersenne prime · Musical · Physics · Swift · Historical and Literary Analyses · Historical and Literary Studies · Mathematics · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.17 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2020 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |