Gulliver's Travels In The Perspective Of Aristotle's Ethical Critics

Jonathan Swift was a prominent realistic novelist in the 18th century England. During his lifetime he created a large number of literary works, including essays, narrative poems, collections of books, satirical novels and so on. His masterpiece Gulliver's Travels describes the singular experiences of the narrative author Gulliver through the sailings of four voyages to different fantastic countries, alluding to reality and criticizing various aspects of contradictions in the capitalist society in Britain to the utmost. These aspects include the British monarchy, judicial system, colonial policy and many moral ones such as social customs. Even today, after the passing 200 years when we reread this classic work again, the profound satire and moral concerns are still thought-provoking for us.For this classic novel, there is never lack of scholastic studies to its various aspects such as political humor and irony techniques etc, which have all made notable achievements. However, the studies from the perspective of ethics are seldom rare. This paper just make the study from the angles of ethics of the famous ancient Greek philosophers especially the representative Aristotle's thoughts as a starting point, mainly from the three aspects—ethics and politics, ethics and human nature, ethics and rational, taking politics, humanity, reason, and morality as the research emphases, to review this work with totally new literary value, as well as the anxiety and deep concern of Swift to social and political conflicts in his society. Furthermore, through the discussion of the significance of Aristotle's ethic thoughts to Swift, this paper further make an analysis of ethical morality in Swift's mind reflected in Gulliver's Travels, which also have a positive significance to the cultivation of social morality and individual reason in modern society.This paper consists of five chapters. In the preface part it briefly introduces the author Swift and his masterpiece Gulliver's Travels, and makes an analysis of the relevant domestic and foreign comments for Swift and this novel, as well as the general framework and innovative points in the paper. Chapter One is the basis of theory, mainly introduced ethics criticism as a kind of literary method, its definition and significance, and the development of ethics from ancient Greek times to the 18th century England, set the emphasis on the ethical thoughts of Aristotle basing on the aspects of ethics and politics, human nature and rational souls. Chapter Two, Three, and Four are the central parts in the whole thesis. Here these chapters respectively analyze the ethical phenomenon in Gulliver's Travels from the three aspects relating to ethics mentioned above, through the re-examining and re-analyzing the classic work, prove the problems of social and human nature that Swift paid deep anxiety and concerned to, as well as Swift's ideal construction about capitalist country, which just cater to Aristotle's ethical proposal in ancient Greek. Chapter Five expounds from the perspective of the profound influence of Aristotle's ethics on Swift, further analyzes the ethical significance in this masterpiece, which also contributes as a complement to the above mentioned analysis. The final part comes to a conclusion that Swift's purpose is to expose rather than change or make revolutions, and through the research of ethical views we can get a totally new comprehension and understanding to his thoughts and values in this classic work.