English writers. Мартемьянова Н.В. - 4 стр.

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    Gulliver’s second voyage takes him to the country of Brobdingnag (BRAHB dihng
nag), where the people are 12 times larger than Gulliver and greatly amused by his
puny size.
    Gulliver’s third voyage takes him to several strange kingdoms. The conduct of the
odd people of these countries represents the kinds of foolishness Swift saw in his
world. For example, in the academy of Lagado, scholars spend all their time on useless
projects such as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Here Swift was satirising
impractical scientists and philosophers.
    In his last voyage, Gulliver discovers a land ruled by wise and gentle horses called
Houyhnhnms
(hoo IHN uhmz or HWIHN uhmz).Savage, stupid animals called Yahoos also live
there.The Yahoos look like human beings.The Houyhnhnms distrust Gulliver because
they believehe is a Yahoo.Gulliver wishes to stay in the agreeable company of the
Houyhnhnms, but they force him to leave.After Gulliver returns to England, he
converses at first onlywith the horses in his stable.
    Some people believe Swift was a misanthrope (hater of humanity), and that the
ugliness and stupidity in his book reflect his view of the world. Other people argue that
Swift was a devoted and courageous Christian who could not have denied the existance
of goodness and hope. Still others claim that in Gulliver’s Travels, Swift is really
urging us to avoid the extremes of the boringly perfect Houyhnhnms and the wild
Yahoos, and to lead moderate sensible lives.
    Scholars are still tryuing to discover all the ways in which real people, institutions,
and events are represented in Gulliver’s Travels.But readers need not be scholars to
find pleasure in the book and to find themselves set to thinking about its distinctive
picture of human life.
TEXT C
    Swift’s other works. A Modest Proposal (1729) is probably Swift’s second best-
known work. In this essay, Swift pretends to urge that Irish babies be killed, sold, and
eaten. They would be as well off, says Swift bitterly, as those Irish who grow up in
poverty under British rule. Swift hoped this outrageous suggestion would shock the
Irish people into taking sensible steps to improve their condition. He had in mind such
steps as the earlier refusal of the Irish to allow the British to arrange for Irish copper
coins. The Irish rejected these coins because it was widely believed that the coins
would be debased. Swift’s series of Drapier’s Letters (1724) actually forced a change
in British policy on this matter.
    A Tale of a Tub (1704), on the surface, is a story of three brothers arguing over their
father’s last will. But it is actually a clever attack on certain religious beliefs and on
humanity’s false pride in its knowledge.
    In The Battle of the Books (17040), a lighter work, Swift imagines old and new
books in a library waging war on each other. This work reflected a real quarrel between
scholars who boasted of being modern and scholars who believed the wisdom of the
ancient thinkers could not be bettered.
    Swift could be very playful. He loved riddles, jokes, and hoaxes. One of his best
literary pranks was the Bickerstaff Papers (1708-1709). In this work, he invented an