Heteroglosia en Los viajes de Gulliver de Jonathan Swift

Abstract

Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is considered one of the great works of eighteenth-century English literature; its charm largely lies in the scathing satire that Swift makes of humanity by relativizing the superiority of the human being and its institutions. Swift highlights how pride and greed can lead humanity to its degradation, calling into question its innate rationality. In the work, important public figures, as well as the scientific and philosophical ideas of the early eighteenth century, are ridiculed—hence its clearly controversial nature. Although the work was conceived as a parody of travel books, the parodic imitation of a great diversity of social languages is equally notorious in it, in which many of the philosophical, political, and scientific concerns of that time are expressed, such as the position of England in the war against France or the fate of the country in the religious sphere. Yet, above all, the work is presented as a parody of travel books, a genre that enjoyed great popularity in that time. This paper highlights the role played by parody in the construction of this work and shows an example of what Bakhtin understands as heteroglossia. This stylistic resource contributed ostensibly to the subsequent development of the modern novel.