Swift and the apes

By reading The fourth book of Gulliver I hace reached the conclusion that the planet of the apes and the houmonyms come from the same idea. In both, animals are superior than men, while human being is downed to an irrational class. When a rational man appears in both places, horses and apes are worried and they want to throw them off.

Reading between the lines

Even though Gulliver's travels seems a children book with many adventures of mystery places to travel, Jonathan Swift has a lot to say within the countries, the characters and the travels in general.

Most of the book reflects the political experiences he had during his life. For those of you who do not know it,  Swift dedicated much of his life to politics.

I am going to analyse, from my point of view and with the help of some information I have found on the internet what do these four travels mean.

 

Lilliput

We can consider this first travel a critic to the Tories’ illegal peace treaty. He thinks they did a good act in a bad manner

Brobdingnag

These giant people symbolize a special part of the human being when you examine them carefully. Gulliver is forced to pay special attention to many things in the book. In this country Gulliver is more treated like a doll than like a human but he learns many values. He show as that inside a giant body there can be goowillness and nobility as the king and queen have.

Laputa

The way people from Laputa throw the rocks over the other cities, seem to be the first time that air bombing was consider as a war method.

He also considers the way of knowing so much about science, math and art and not putting it into a practice an absurd thing. With this he pretends to satirize the royal society and the carry out of its experiments

When Swift describes Gulliver talking to famous people’s ghosts, he is making a metaphor about the theme of young people against old people. Young writers often think that old writers are old fashioned and they have to improve themselves.

 Houyhnhnm

Unless Houyhnhnm have mistreated Gulliver and Portuguese people have rescued him, after meeting these wise horses, Gulliver think human being only think in basic instints and he underestimate them. This maybe can be written in this way because Swift was in a way, misanthropist.

The Precursor of modern musicals

The Beggar's Opera consists on three acts and a prologue. It is written by John Gay and the music is composed by Johann Christoph Pepusch.
It is considered as the first musical comedy. 
The Beggar's opera is a satirical ballade wich talks about the low class, thieves and prostitutes in NewGate. 

In fact John Gay gives his opinion of opera by creating an anti-opera that satirizes italian operas and how the high class is interested in it.
It had its premiere the 29 of January of 1728 in the Lincoln Inn Friend theatre, in London. It had a lot of success and John Gay became very famous because of the opera.

 Since then, The Beggar's Opera has been interpretating in many theatres along the world

Rape of the Lock

Belinda has had a dream in which her guardian has told her that a disaster is coming but he says to her that hewill protect her with all his power and ability. When she wakes up, she prepares for her social activities of the day. She travels to Hampton court palace by crossing river Thames in order to throw a party. Everybody is playing cards and drinking coffee. In that place is where the baron is waiting for Belinda. He is deeply in love with her and with Clarissa's help, he steals a lock of her hair. Belinda gets really angry and looks for justice.

The reason of Alexander Pope to write this poem was to write a story about another real story about two people who belong to two aristocrat families. Arabella is the girl and Lord Petre is the boy. Lord Petre is in love with Arabella and he steals a lock of her hair making a big conflict between the two families.

This story reminds me a bit of Romeo and Juliet but in an opposite way because in Shakespeare's play the two families are set as odds and Romeo and Juliet by their death make that war between both families stop, meanwhile in the story of the rape of the lock, the two families are friends and they split up because of  the baron and Belinda (Arabella and Lord Petre)

A new civilization

According to the discussion in class about Oroonoco from Aphra Benn I have been thinking about europeans and slaves, indians and africans and I have remembered a disney film: Pocahontas. M y question is, if the Lion King is a film based in the Shakespeare's play Hamlet, could Pocahontas be based on the arrival of english people to America in the restoration era? Well, I have been looking for some information about the tale of Pocahontas and I have found that this story is based in the XVII century.
Everything starts in 1607. James I is the king of England. English people travel to America to colonize the indians. The indian tribe headed by Pocahontas' father  kidnap John Smith. When they are going to execute him, Pocahontas jumps over him to save his life. This is the way in which indians and europeans start a kind of friendship, but this friendship ends soon because the english people are extending over the country and indians feel threatened.
Smith and some people returns to England and Pocahontas get married with a man called John Rolfe. He has got a tobacco field in Virginia. As many colonizers has left America, this man try to demonstrate that indians can be educated like he has done with Pocahontas.

Welcome Post

Hello everyone,
This is my first post on my new blog. At first I thought to call it All for love because of John's Dryden's play but finally  I have called it  the way of the world because of William congreve's one. I think this tragedy explains in many different ways how they lived in that period. He explains the society of London ( remember that in the restoration many people move to the cities and London becomes an important place), the characters are more realistic and women take an important place in society.