Bryan Alkemeyer (Author)
What does it mean that Swift models the rational non-humans of Gulliver’s Travels on horses, instead of other animals? Taking up this question, I argue that part 4 confronts readers with the incongruity between traditional admiration of horses as the noblest animals and their systematic exploitation as beasts of burden. To set Swift’s perspective in relief, I compare his satire with representations of horses in natural histories by Topsell, Jonstonus, and Buffon, as well as an equestrian manual by William Cavendish. While the exploitation of noble horses does not disturb Topsell or Jonstonus, Buffon’s text betrays signs of anxiety, which it nevertheless attempts to suppress. Cavendish, meanwhile, asserts that the human/horse hierarchy must be enforced with continual vigilance precisely because of the horse’s signal nobility. In contrast, Swift exposes attitudes toward horses as intolerably contradictory. Crucially, Gulliver and the Houyhnhnm master’s conversation about the treatment of horses emphasizes the disparity between their admiration and abasement. Swift offers an example of more logically consistent justifications for exploitation in characterizations of the Yahoos, but it is unclear whether the text advocates better treatment for horses (to accord with their status as the noblest animals) or debunks idealizations of horses (to produce a more compelling rationalization for exploitation). Although I distinguish Swift’s perspective on horses from modern arguments for the ethical treatment of animals, I conclude by suggesting that Gulliver’s Travels, in its resistance to modern paradigms, provides a vantage point from which we might undertake a radical re-evaluation of the human/animal relationship.
...More
Book
Monica Mattfeld;
(2017)
Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and English Horsemanship
(/isis/citation/CBB685252239/)
Book
Lynall, Gregory;
(2012)
Swift and Science: The Satire, Politics, and Theology of Natural Knowledge, 1690--1730
(/isis/citation/CBB001252468/)
Thesis
Keithley, Walter H.;
(2004)
Science as Literature, Literature as Science: Discursive Negotiations of the Public Status of Science in the Long Eighteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001561845/)
Article
George N. Vlahakis;
(2019)
Science and Imagination: An Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB609881959/)
Chapter
Hiatt, Alfred;
(2011)
Terra Australis and the Idea of Antipodes
(/isis/citation/CBB001201506/)
Thesis
Spratt, Danielle L.;
(2011)
The Scientifically Marked Body: Dehumanization and Emasculation in British Literature, 1620--1767
(/isis/citation/CBB001567288/)
Article
Alff, David;
(2014)
Swift's Solar Gourds and the Rhetoric of Projection
(/isis/citation/CBB001201790/)
Article
Girten, Kristin M.;
(2013)
Mingling with Matter: Tactile Microscopy and the Philosophic Mind in Brobdingnag and Beyond
(/isis/citation/CBB001201896/)
Book
Malcolmson, Cristina;
(2013)
Studies of Skin Color in the Early Royal Society: Boyle, Cavendish, Swift
(/isis/citation/CBB001214293/)
Chapter
Cook, Elizabeth Heckendorn;
(2012)
The Vocal Stump: The Politics of Tree-Felling in Swift's “On Cutting down the Old Thorn at Market Hill”
(/isis/citation/CBB001421360/)
Article
Melissa Bailes;
(2016)
Literary Plagiarism and Scientific Originality in the "Trans-Atlantic Wilderness" of Goldsmith, Aikin, and Barbauld
(/isis/citation/CBB069069881/)
Book
Stefanie Stockhorst;
Jürgen Overhoff;
Penelope J. Corfield;
(2021)
Human-Animal Interactions in the Eighteenth Century: From Pests and Predators to Pets, Poems and Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB446524520/)
Book
Lynn Festa;
(2021)
Fiction Without Humanity: Person, Animal, Thing in Early Enlightenment Literature and Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB396379434/)
Book
Kari Weil;
(2020)
Precarious Partners: Horses and Their Humans in Nineteenth-Century France
(/isis/citation/CBB300272059/)
Article
Daniel Gethmann;
(2020)
Levels of communication: The talking horse experiments
(/isis/citation/CBB085423128/)
Book
McShane, Clay;
Tarr, Joel A.;
(2007)
The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000950032/)
Article
Childers, Leisl Carr;
(2013)
Leisl Carr Childers on The Gus Bundy Photographs and The Wild Horse Controversy
(/isis/citation/CBB001320301/)
Book
Edwards, Peter;
(2007)
Horse and Man in Early Modern England
(/isis/citation/CBB001201097/)
Chapter
Monzote, Reinaldo Funes;
(2013)
Animal Labor and Protection in Cuba: Changes in Relationships with Animals in the Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001422679/)
Article
Tamar Novick;
(2022)
On All Fours: Transient Laborers, the Threat of Movement, and the Aftermath of Disease
(/isis/citation/CBB638639306/)
Be the first to comment!