Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver’s Travels
- The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver’s Travels
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Note on the Text
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Part II Genres
- Part III Reading Gulliver’s Travels
- Part IV Afterlives
- Chapter 14 Critical Reception
- Chapter 15 Further Voyages
- Chapter 16 Visual Culture
- Chapter 17 Screen Media
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to Literature
Chapter 16 - Visual Culture
from Part IV - Afterlives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2023
- The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver’s Travels
- The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver’s Travels
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Note on the Text
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Part II Genres
- Part III Reading Gulliver’s Travels
- Part IV Afterlives
- Chapter 14 Critical Reception
- Chapter 15 Further Voyages
- Chapter 16 Visual Culture
- Chapter 17 Screen Media
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to Literature
Summary
“Gulliver’s Travels has long been connected to, and appropriated within, visual culture. The maps and portraits in early editions of the text are part of a complex paratextual apparatus which purports to establish its authenticity and veracity while simultaneously debunking that illusion. However, more recent use of imagery taken – often radically out of context – from the Travels bears witness to the work’s changing status, from literary satire to an element of popular visual culture. This chapter studies some of the various forms and representations involved in these processes, including illustrations, paintings, graphic novels, cartoons, and advertisements, and examines the ways in which images of and relating to Lemuel Gulliver and his travels, which were once unconvincing indicators of authorial reliability, have evolved. Over the centuries, Swift’s imaginary voyage has increasingly been epitomised and reworked, becoming part of a collective iconography familiar to a global audience that has often little to no direct knowledge of the original text.”
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver's Travels , pp. 206 - 223Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023