Abstract
Abstract This thesis examines the figuration of cannibalism in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and A Modest Proposal (1729) in relation to works in his time, including George Psalmanazar’s Description of Formosa (1704-1705), Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), and Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1689). The historical formation of cannibalism in Swift’s works illustrates that Swift may have not only been indebted to the long tradition of the figuration of cannibalism since Christopher Columbus and Michel de Montaigne but also owed much to the rhetorical concepts of cannibalism in the works of his contemporaries. This thesis highlights these issues in Swift’s works: How is the representation of cannibals significant in the construction of the other in his time? What are the differences between Swift’s and his contemporaries’ view on cannibals? How does Swift complicate and politicize this subject in Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal? Hayden White’s idea of “historical discourse” will frame my exploration of the figuration of cannibalism in Swift’s works. The thesis would be divided into two major parts: Each probes cannibalism as a historical discourse under modern interpretation in relation to Swift and his contemporaries. I aim to clarify how Swift complicates and politicizes the cannibalistic figure in his works. The Introduction concentrates on the beginning of modern cannibalism since Columbus and Montaigne, investigating how the figures of cannibalism are applied to several uses. The tradition of the figures of man-eating can be traced back to Greek myth, Homer, and Herodotus’s Histories. The cannibalistic figures were presented either as an indication of deep hatred to an enemy or a sign of cultural difference. The practice of cannibalism was looked upon with no moral judgment. Modern concepts of cannibalism began in Columbus’s naming the Caribbean anthropophagi “cannibals.” The figuration of cannibalism has been turned into a form of a “historical discourse” since 1492 when Columbus famously categorized Amerindian savages as man-eating cannibals and associated the figures of cannibalism with an indication of extreme barbarity and a cultural trope that denotes a group of people who are in need of conversion and colonial civilization. Montaigne’s seminal essay “Of Cannibals” (1580) led cannibalism to another direction—that is, it functioned as a weapon for self-criticism, which spoke out the fact that the civilized Europeans could be much crueler than the cannibals. For Montainge, cannibals were still those naked savages, but Europeans might be worse than these people if they continued performing brutal acts.Chapter Two focuses on the images of cannibals in works by Psalmanazar, Defoe, and Behn to figure out the general concepts of cannibalism in Swift’s age. Later in Swift’s time, the two main concepts of cannibalism from Columbus and Montaigne were applied in travel accounts and other literary works about the savage other. Psalmanazar’s Description of Formosa succeeded the tradition of the stereotypes of the exotic other, reinforcing his fake identity as a native Formosan by eating raw meat and telling sensational stories about the cannibalistic practice in Formosa. The images of cannibals in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe are presented according to the stereotypes of the savage other at that time, which justify European domination and colonization. Behn’s Oroonoko, on the other hand, follows Montaigne’s tradition, criticizing Europeans’ brutality by comparing them with savages.My main concern in Chapter Three is how Swift criticizes his contemporaries’ ideas of cannibalism in Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal. Basically, Swift agreed that Europeans were no better than the bloodthirsty cannibals, but his attitude toward the savage other was not sympathetic, either. The figuration of cannibalism in both Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal forms a particular historical discourse, under which both Europeans and the savage other victimize the other and are victimized by each other.This thesis concludes that Swift’s idea of cannibalism broadens modern meanings of the cannibalistic figure.