Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

• Published 1728
• Belfuscans: “I found the demands of nature so strong upon me, that I could not forbear showing my impatience (perhaps against the strict rules of decency) by putting my finger frequently to my mouth,, to signify that I wanted food.
• He ate enough for 1724 Lilliiputians
• Yahoos: “They held their food between the claws of their fore feet and tore it with their teeth"
• Yahoos: humands are “Yahoos in shape and disposition, perhaps a little more civilised"
• If you through five Yahoos enough for fifty “they will instead of eating peaceably, fall together by the ears each single one impatient to have all to itself"
• Srinivas Aravamudan, 2012 "Text reflects deeply on colonialism"
• Ahmed Dayab, 2011: Ecocritical reading - Houyhnhnms are to show that “human culture is corrupt"
• Houyhnhnms: "Each horse and mare ate their own hay, and their own mash of oats and milk, with much decency and regularity"
• Houyhnhnms: “I never had one hour’s sickness while I stayed in this island"
• Aravamudan: Gulliver’s steady retreat into hippophilia and equitherapy insanity or a radical critique of anthropocentrism