9
votes
When did people begin to regard Gulliver's Travels as a children's book?
After a few more searches, I discovered the blog post Curator's Choice: Gulliver's Travels on the Toronto Reference Library Blog (21 April 2016). This blog post mentions an abridged edition for ...
- 43.8k
8
votes
Accepted
In Swift's "Gulliver's Travels", Gulliver claims that 'princes seldom get their meat hot'. What does Gulliver (and Swift) mean by that?
Elaborate banquets were fashionable among the European aristocracy in the eighteenth century when Swift was writing Gulliver’s Travels:
In comparison with today’s food preparation, however, the ...
- 52.1k
6
votes
Accepted
Did Swift really say, ‘Puns are disliked by none but those who can't make them’?
It looks like it did come from Swift, albeit not quite in those exact words.
In "The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift ...: Accurately Revised ... Adorned with Copper-plates; with Some Account of the ...
- 23.2k
6
votes
How do you pronounce Houyhnhnm?
The word's origin is in mimicking the whinny of a horse, which is after all what the Houyhnhnms are.
To my knowledge Swift never gave more specific pronunciation guides than that. There's probably no ...
- 5,018
5
votes
Accepted
What historical event / injunction does Swift allude to in this paragraph of "An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity"?
An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity was published in 1708, and so Swift must have been referring to events at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The exact event he had in mind is ...
- 8,086
4
votes
Accepted
Of what trumpery, of what dormant statute does Swift write in "An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity"?
One online version of your book offers an extensive footnote for that passage and elaborates on the four as they relate to Swift [links inserted for context]
John Asgill (1659-1738), became a member ...
- 1,272
3
votes
Accepted
In A Tale of a Tub, in what sense does Martin stand between Peter and Jack?
Anglicanism is somehow 'between' Catholicism and Protestantism.
To answer your first question, the phrase "via media" means "the middle road", and one of the commonest contexts where this phrase is ...
- 70.7k
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