Abstract
From its first publication in 1726, Gulliver’s Travels has been read as a satirical exploration of the question: What is Man? ‘Man’ was of course taken to mean ‘human,’ an equation of the generic with the gendered that concealed, then as now, constructions of masculinity from the critical eye, and did much to establish the male as the unquestioned and unquestionable standard by which to measure the world. In this essay, I want to strategically suspend this equation and read Swift’s text as a satirical exploration, not of the universal category of the human but of the specific category of the male. My guiding question therefore will be: What does Gulliver’s Travels tell us about contemporary notions of masculinity, and in what way are they being satirized here?
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© 2011 Stefan Horlacher
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Karremann, I. (2011). Augustan Manliness and Its Anxieties: Shaftesbury and Swift. In: Horlacher, S. (eds) Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present. Global Masculinities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137015877_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137015877_7
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