Assalamualaikum and welcome back to the English
literature class at the Islamic University English
department. As you all know part of your class
assessment is a five mark presentation on a topic,
an issue, a literary issue of your own choice.
Today we have a seal Asil Sharab, she has an
interesting presentation on George Eliot. Let's
spend some quality time enjoying this
presentation. Hello everyone, I'm gonna start
talking about George Eliot. This is a picture of
George Eliot. She's a woman, as you can see in the
picture. She was born on November 22, 1819, and
she died at age 61 in December 22, 1880. Her real
name is Mary Anne Evans. as you can see, and she
changed her name, she used a pen name, so her work
would be noticed, because in the Victorian age,
the male gender role was more significant.
I'm gonna talk about a poem she wrote, Sweet
Endings Come and Go Love. She's talking to her
love, and she's talking about their love story.
The explanation of the title is when considering
love, most sweet things happen in relations, but
they will eventually fade. Things in a
relationship, a lot of things happen, but at the
end, some feelings may miss, may come and go. It
doesn't stay the same for a while.
That's the poem. I'm gonna read it first, then
I'll let someone read it. This is in Spanish. She
started in Spanish words, then she turned into...
You don't know Spanish? No, but I can read it.
Okay, good. La noche viuna se viene, la noche
viuna se va, y nuestros nos hermos y nos volverás
más al vilánico. Vilániquico. Okay, and that's the
English part. Sweet evenings come and go. They
come and went for your. This evening of our life
love shall go and come no more.
When we have passed away, love, all things will
keep their name. But yet no life on earth, love,
with ours will be the same. The daisies will be
there, love. The stars in heaven will shine. I
shall not feel thee wish, love, nor thou my hands
in thine. A better time will come, love, and
better souls be born. I would not be the best,
love, to leave thee now forlorn. Can someone read,
please? Who wants to read? Not the Spanish,
please. You can read the English part. Okay. Sweet
evenings come and go. They come in an advent of
pure. This evening our life's love shall go and
come no more. When we have passed away, love, all
things will keep their name. But yet no life on
earth, love, but ours will be the same. The days
will be their love, the stars in heaven will
shine. I shall not feel thy wish, love, nor draw
my hand in kind. A better time will come, love,
and better souls depart. I would not be the best
love to leave thee now forlorn. Just to be clear,
I want to just say this word means for a long
time. So they came and went a long time ago. Also,
This is again, sign is a pronoun of yours, right?
Yeah, and forlorn is alone, means alone.
Okay, I'm gonna analyze the poem in brief. This is
the Spanish part. It's translated into English.
The good night is coming. The good night goes away
and will go and we will not be back anymore. This
is, I didn't, I didn't, okay. Here, the woman is
expressing to her love that their love has to end.
It has to become, it has to end for some time.
She's really attached to him, she loves him very
much, and he's everything for her, but she thinks
that she needs time to, in their future, it's best
for them to be apart.
The daisies will be there. Okay, this line means
that good things will last forever. The second
line talks about that the stars in heaven will
shine. She's saying that there's something in our
relationship that will always rise, that will
always be remembered, that will never be
forgotten.
Okay, I shall not feel thy wish. She's saying that
they would never wish to be back together, but
they're looking forward to be in a relationship
with other people, with another person. She would
go with another person, but she's saying that it
would never be the same with their relationship.
Also, she's saying that they won't want what they
had, but they will value the moments that they
share together. Sweet evenings come and go. She's
talking about the evenings, the romantic evenings
they had together, the meetings, the nights they
spent together. She's saying that they will never
be forgotten, but as time passed, the evenings
were less. They had less connections between each
other. They sat together, but with less
connections. Okay.
Here she's saying that the young love was awesome,
but when they grew older, their love grew with
them. They had difficult times, they had difficult
problems.
And she's saying here that better times will come.
She will go with another person. She will meet
other people, but her love will never be the same,
and she will have a bad time being alone without
him. But she's saying that she has to go see a
new, she has to start a new beginning. Okay, now
I'm gonna ask some questions. One second. Okay,
here, can someone tell me the mode of the poem?
The mood.
Mood, memories, okay.
Yeah, sadness for time, love for the time they
spent together, loneliness, she's alone, she feels
lonely. Okay, here in this poem, we have a
personification in these lines. Can someone get it
out? Personification.
Yeah, that is one, but there's another one.
Souls will be born. Yeah, souls will be born. The
souls that are not born, they live in us. They
don't have a time to be born. What is the rhyme
scheme of the poem? The rhyme scheme.
Can someone come out here to do it? Who wants to
come out here? A, B, C, D.
Yeah. A, A, A. Forget about this one, go to the
English one. Okay, go to the English one. A, B, C,
D. Uh-huh. A, B, A, B. No, just continue. No, you
can start over again with every new standard.
Okay. It's better to do this. A, B, A, B. A, B, A,
B. I did it a different way.
My advice, usually when you do rhyme scheme for a
long poem, start over every stanza. Because we
don't have a hundred English letters, because
there are poems with thousands of lines, right? So
with every stanza, especially when there is a
clear break in the stanza, you can start over to
make addition. So you know, A, B, A, B, A, B, A,
B. Okay, finally. We have two shifts in tone. The
poet shifted in tone. One part she's happy about
the relationship, but the other stands that she's
saying that she has to move on. Let me read it,
okay. In line, the shifting tones, the shifts
appear in line four. She started her poem by
saying that she has to move on and these things,
but then she tells their love that their love
shall not continue. She goes on to tell the
positive things. She talks about the positive
things they did in their relationship. Also in
line 11, she seems to be in an optimistic mood,
but then she moves on to saying that she cannot be
left alone. Thank you very much. And that's the
rhyme scheme I did. A, B, A, A, B, C, D, E, D, E,
D. But if you have like a hundred lines here,
where would you go? There is a solution for this,
but if you have to go for each
Okay, my comment here is that this is an excellent
presentation, well prepared actually. I'm very
proud of you, you should be proud of yourself. You
discussed interesting issues, especially that a
woman had to choose a man's name so that he can
publish. What does that tell about the society and
about publications and the canon and the
mainstream writing of that time? Two things. I
told you you have five maximum seven minutes
because we have so many students we can't you know
okay hopefully when we have fewer students in the
class in the future we can give you more and more
time so my advice is to pick one issue in a text
if you want to discuss a text just one issue one
thing for example I could discuss I could spend 20
minutes discussing the rhyme scheme in this in
this text, and how it reflects the author of the
theme, or how this text is a woman text, a female
text, rather than, because all the poems we read
so far here, the extracts, were written by men.
But here we have a woman. Does this reflect, does
this show? Is there anything the woman is doing in
the text, the female poet is doing in the text to
break the rules determined by man, to break all
these rules imposed on people, especially on women
by male critics? I think we can trace some of
this. Like for example here, the rhyme scheme.
The rhyme scheme itself, in my opinion, indicates
that she wants to break away with the rules of
decorum imposed here. For example, the go, your,
love, and more, we have A, B, C, B, and then
there's something new. We've never seen this
before. The fact that
times one, two, three, four, five, six, she's
repeating this, she's emphasizing this, she's
talking to, addressing love in her particular way.
But we've never seen a poem, in Arabic if you
repeat the same rhyme, I think every seven, like
seven lines or so, this is a sign of weakness. In
Arabic, in traditional Arabic poetry, classical
Arabic poetry. She's doing this. In my opinion,
she's defying the rules imposed by man. She's
writing her own poetry the way she likes, the way
she feels. Her own form, thank you. And this is
really interesting. Thank you. My last point is
that try when you do a presentation in the future,
go for official slides like white, black text,
white background, black text. Try not to crowd
your slide with a lot of information and colors
and everything. This is the rule that says seven
by seven, seven words, seven lines. Sometimes I
don't follow this. Hopefully when you're a
teacher, you don't have to stick to, you know, to
the rules. But yeah, it's always easier, better
for you and for your audience to
And again, thank you for engaging your classmates,
your friends here. Thank you very much. Let's go
back. Last time we spoke about a very interesting
thing. In my opinion, it was one of the most
interesting topics so far because we discussed for
the first time women writers, authors.
We spoke about, can you remind me? Who are the
people we spoke about? Noronoko. What is
significant about Mary Manley and Aphra Behn? What
is significant? What did she do? Yes? Okay, so to
speak, they were the mothers of the English novel.
In a way, they started the English novel. They
started the first steps of the English novel. What
else? What else did they do to literature, to
English, to women, to feminism, to the movement?
Mary talked about the rights of women. She
discussed the idea of rape being against men. So
they were spokeswomen for all the women in the
world. They spoke about men's violence against
women in the society. They exposed the vices of
men, especially the violence and discrimination
against women. And they said that her writings
were used objectively. Exactly, interesting. When
you read literature books, sometimes you'll find
people describing especially Mary mainly as
scandalous and objectionable, controversial. But
always remember, always go a step or two back.
When you read something in a book, don't take it
for granted. Ask yourself. Who's writing this?
Whose perspective? Whose opinion is this? And then
we realize here that critics of that time most of
the time are generally men. So this is a man
judging a woman. And generally there will be some
kind of discrimination against women only for
being So these were daring, brave women, brave
writers because they wanted to speak for the women
in their communities. And that's why Virginia
Woolf later on praised them, especially she
praised Aphra Behn. I think she said something
like, all the women in the world should put roses
on Aphra Behn's grave. This is how significant it
is. Today we move to speak about Daniel Defoe, and
hopefully we'll have time to discuss Jonathan
Swift. Traditionally, many people consider Daniel
Defoe as the father of the English novel. The
first real novel is classically, we don't
necessarily agree with this, is Daniel Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe.
Robinson Crusoe. It was published in 1719. Defoe
himself was a journalist. He started his life as a
journalist. And this influenced the way he write,
of course. Robinson Crusoe tells the story about a
man, an English person, who wanted to get richer,
to gain wealth, to change his life. And at that
time, the easiest way for any person to change his
life is to go out to travel to the new world, to
the colonies. Remember travel writing? It's being
developed here in a way or another. So his parents
were not okay with this because they represent the
older generation and he's the younger generation,
adventurous and everything. And he doesn't listen
to them. He goes with some people to work on a
ship, and they travel somewhere to the New World.
On his way, on their way, the ship was destroyed
by a storm. The only survivor was Robinson
himself, Robinson Crusoe. Interesting, maybe this
rings a bell because we've seen Tom Hanks in a
movie surviving on a desert island. So he lands on
a desert island in the middle of the sea where
there are no people there. no society, no
community. At the beginning, he was hopeful to get
out as soon as possible, people come and save him,
rescue him, and then he was... he passed through
so many stages of hope and despair, belief and
disbelief, and so many things. He spent about 30
years on the island that's really tough being
alone cut out isolated but because this is the
white christian european english man he always has
the ability to do what to create a civilization
and that's that's one theme here it's the power of
the white man how a European person, how an
English person can go anywhere in the world and be
the master and control. And he indeed begins his
own society or community. He calls it sometimes, I
am the ruler. This is my kingdom. This is my
island. Similar to what we had before in The
Tempest and Prospero saying, this is my island.
It's not his island. But a white man has always
been portrayed as such, being entitled to what he
doesn't own. Now later on there is in this island
he saves, he meets, he sees some cannibal. He was
terrified because he met some cannibals. You know
what a cannibal is? People who
eat human flesh, the cannibals. people who eat
human flesh was terrified because at the beginning
he saw one footprint not two not three just one
and then later on he was on the lookout and he saw
a group of people and he saved a person he was
about to be eaten he saved him physically
literally and of course metaphorically he named
him friday Very funny name. No offense for people
whose relatives are named Friday. But it's funny
because this is in a way in English at least in
Arabic we're used to Juma and Khamis. But we don't
know many people. We have May. You know, some
people named May after May, the month, but not
after the days. And the funny thing is that when
he goes back to England after years, he realizes
that when he was keeping record of the days and
the dates, he skipped one or two days. So probably
he should be named Thursday, Khamis or Arba or
whatever. That means, ah, but we don't have
Saturday. Something, anyway. And the other
character is poly. Do you know what poly is? Poly
is? Poly is a parrot. You know what a parrot is?
The bird that repeats stuff you say. A very,
listen, a very interesting community here.
Someone, he calls him my man. My man. He owns him.
It's like property. Because he isn't, he's
inferior. He's backward, he's not white, he's not
Christian, he's not English, so he controls him.
He tries to cure his religion
because he's in a way a savage, a backward, to
civilize him. Civilize and cure Friday because
it's taken for granted that the English way of
life is the best English, the best way in life.
Now this relationship between Robinson and the
parrot and Robinson and Friday is very
interesting. When I read Robinson Crusoe, I always
like to compare between Friday and Polly. Listen
to me. The choice of the parrot poly as a bird
that repeats what you say is interesting because
the man wanted somebody to communicate with. But
the bird is someone who only parrots because
parrot can also be used as a verb. To parrot, to
repeat, to imitate. It only echoes. And this is
significant because Robinson Crusoe as a master,
as a colonizer, as an occupier, as an imperialist,
as a capitalist, he wanted people only to obey. He
wanted people to say yes, say, OK, I will obey. He
wanted people just to repeat what he says word for
word. In my understanding here of the novel,
I usually, again, this is somewhere here. I'll go
back to the rest. When I compare Friday to Polly,
I think Polly is a more interesting name. That's
number one, Polly. Right? Yes. But it's a pitna.
The most significant thing here for me is that
when Friday speaks, although he was cured and
civilized by the master, his English was still
broken. For example, he doesn't use the word. He
can't understand that man can have the irregular
plural of men. He's too stupid to understand this.
So he says man.
He's too subjugated. He doesn't say I generally.
He doesn't say I do this, I do that. He says me,
like always in the object. He can't be a subject.
He can't be the person who does things. He only
follows, et cetera. However, very, very
interesting thing. When Polly speaks, the parrot,
When it speaks, it uses perfect English, almost
Queen's English. And in one instance, I noticed
that Polly uses the past perfect tense, a tense we
generally don't use. I have been ranting for life
for 10 minutes, not once have I used the past
perfect tense. We don't use it very often. But
this bird is so smart that it can tell the
difference between two actions and which action
happened first, right? But Friday doesn't,
although he's the human being. So in my opinion,
this is how the book is presenting the white man
as the master, the owner, the king, the ruler, and
the others. the people of the black people people
of color as uncivilized ignorant backward savages
who need to be civilized and educated and that's
why people like Edward Said would look at this
book as
and allegory of imperialism. Again, we go back to
post-colonialism and post-colonial literature. The
book could be about many things. It could be
about, again, about imperialism and how you can
get rich in a capitalist society, how you can grow
rich when you own land and people. It could be
about the power of white people and white men and
how white men can civilize people and create
society and civilization. It can be about that. It
can be a moral lesson or a fable or an allegory
about survival, how people can survive despite
everything if they try, if they struggle. But it
also can be about how the white people, the
English people, the Europeans, the Christians of
that time can go anywhere in the world, occupy,
colonize. and civilized the people, so to speak.
So many things about this book. I'm not saying
this book is a bad read. It's really interesting.
It's lovely. Probably in the summer you could
start reading this book. But warning, you have to
really be patient with these books.
What we have here is that is again Robinson Crusoe
being represented to us as a man, as a fable of
survival, of praise to the white human, but also
in particular to white European spirit of
survival, that nothing can crush this spirit.
There is an interesting thing here also in the in
the novel to show how a capitalist society works
and functions and money is more important than
anything and materialism is more you know what
capitalism is capitalism what's a what's capital
your capital your capital is your money the money
you have you the property capitalism
Capitalism where you work for your own, you
collect as much money as possible, you want to be
as rich as possible regardless of what people
around you do. So that's very simplistic terms.
When he gets married, so we speak about a novel of
400 pages. 400 pages. When Robinson Crusoe gets
married, how long does it take? One page. In a
way, this is significant. I think there is also
another example where he buys some cows and horses
and it takes more pages than when he gets married.
So relationships are not as important as riches,
as money, as wealth as capitalism and imperialism
here. How did he get back to his land? He was
saved. Some people came to the island and then he
went back to England and he brought more people
and he went back to his island, so to speak. Okay?
So, a post-colonial critic like Edward Said, you
know Edward Said? A Palestinian Christian
intellectual, the author of Orientalism, one
person behind an important theory called post
-colonialism. Post-colonialism is the theory or
the literature that reacted to a colonial
occupation of those countries. Friday, part of
this, Friday was presented as uncivilized,
inferior, not only inferior to his master, because
he is in the book, but also to the bird, Polly.
How? We examine the language. But there are other
things you can read about Friday. Very
interesting, very interesting thing. Another text
by Robinson Crusoe, before I go back to the
pronoun, is called Moll Flanders. Moll, sorry,
Flanders. Moll is a name of, again, a name of a
person. So many books of this age, the 18th
century, took, many novels took their titles from
the name of the main character. If Robinson Crusoe
tells the story of a man who goes through a lot of
troubles and struggle, Moll Flanders traces the
life of a woman. Don't forget, the largest portion
of readership in the 18th century probably were
women. So as authors, you wanted to write things
for them, because they would buy. More than men,
actually. So this is about a woman. This woman,
Moll Flanders, is indeed generally not presented
as a good woman. She commits so many sins, so many
vices. She's a prostitute. She's also a thief. She
goes to prison. She does so many horrible things.
However, when she tells the story, she is already
reformed. She has already changed her life to the
better. And this is a major theme of the 18th
century, like Robinson Crusoe. Life is tough. It's
difficult. You have to struggle. And this is
capitalism. You have to work for your own self.
And if you work hard, you will be rich. If you
work hard, your life work is going to improve. The
same thing happens here. It's a really sad novel,
Moll Flandre, but at the end, it ends happily
because this is the spirit of the age, okay? So it
makes a moral point here about ways of living. The
reader shares her experience. And I, in a way,
identify with her. How does the reader share
somebody's experience? Because generally, when you
read a text, you sometimes find common things
between you and the characters. When you watch a
movie, like in Hamlet, yeah. Can I be like Hamlet?
Would I behave like Hamlet? Can I be like Shylock?
Would I react to this like Shylock? In a way or
another, there are so many ways for you to
identify, so many techniques the authors employ to
make you part of the text. The most important
technique is... Oh, thank you. This was a first
-person narrator. We'll speak about this probably
in two classes. The first person narrator.
When we spoke about poetry and drama, there were
no narrators. The drama is generally largely based
on dialogue or monologue scenes, acts, or
soliloquies, right? People just talk to each
other, and as the audience, we just watch and
judge for ourselves. But in the novel, there's
always someone, usually not the author, who tells
the story. It could be either, number one, a first
-person narrator where One character sometimes, or
usually the main character, uses I. Not always,
but usually the main character, the protagonist,
who tells us the story. So you open the first
book, you sign, I was born, I went to my parents,
I wanted to travel, I did this, I was shipwrecked.
This is a first person narrator. What happens
here, a first person narrator is an interesting
way to tell stories because when you read the
first page and the second and the third you keep
reading you find a lot of you in the text no
matter what no matter because humans share a lot
you have a lot in common when you find a lot in
common between you and this character using the I
I U sometimes largely or in part become the
character. You see yourself in this character, a
man or a woman. So this is one way for you to
identify. I'll elaborate on this later on,
probably on Wednesday, what it means to be. The
other type of narrative is the third person
narrator.
What is a third-person narrator? It's ambitious.
Yeah, there is all-knowing here, but generally a
story told to us from somebody, generally from
outside the text, where he refers to people as he,
she, and things it and they. So talking about
people, the third person, in the third person. So
Ali, if the story says, for example, I overslept
this morning. Oh, I'm tired. I have classes to
attend. And I don't have time to have my
breakfast. My mom is already shouting. I need to
rush because I have to do a presentation. This is
my life. This is the first person. I saw somebody.
I met him. I took a taxi. I paid. I had my lunch.
I went to bed. I started my job. I wrote a poem
and entered first person. But if it is like this,
it was nine o'clock and Huda woke up late. She was
supposed to do a presentation. She asks her mom to
wake her up at six. But her mom is nowhere to be
seen. She moves out. She calls for her mom. Her
mom doesn't reply. She was not at home. So she,
she, he, he, they, this is that person, narrator.
So because he started his life as a journalist,
Robinson Crusoe generally uses the first person
narrator in Robinson Crusoe and in Moll Flanders.
Your question. I just wanted to comment that the
first person could be so boring and you could feel
like he's so exaggerating himself. So the writer
should balance between telling the story and
telling about himself. That's a very interesting
point. But it depends, because things are
relative. What is boring for me could be
interesting for someone. Like football, for
example. I love watching football matches. But
some of you might hate them. Your friend could be
into football, but you could be like, come on. How
would you spend an hour and a half watching people
kicking a ball around, right? So it's relative,
this thing. But yeah, a smart author is one who
doesn't make us Feel bored. But a point here you
need to always think of. When you read this book,
you might feel it's boring nowadays. But remember,
this was written in the early 18th century. And
people were like, whoa, this was a huge success.
Even today, this is a huge success. It's a
classic. It's a famous classic. OK. I'll move to
speak about Jonathan Swift. Two takes for Jonathan
Swift. I hope we have time to cover at least one
of them today. The first one is Gulliver's
Travels. Have you ever heard of Gulliver's
Travels? Gulliver's Travels. Ah, too bad. The days
of the good cartoons are gone. This was turned
into a cartoon. I remember watching this many
times when I was a kid myself. Jonathan Swift. was
also an early 18th century novelist. Gulliver's
Travels, as the name suggests, also we have
traveled, someone traveling. His name is Gulliver.
So this man is known, very famous for his satire
and humor. For example, in his book, The Battle of
the Box, it's actually box. He presents box as
people in a library and the old box and the new
box are fighting. Interesting. But his most
significant work is Gulliver's Travels. And it is
one of the most powerful satires of all time. He
criticizes humanity in general. He criticizes
politics. Religion, science, everything. But in
particular, he openly attacks the English society.
He attacks English colonialism and imperialism
because Swift was Irish. You know, we spoke about
Ireland and Scotland. Ireland was the problem,
remember? So in his book, Gulliver's Travels, he
exposes all these faults and vices of the English
society. There are actually four parts in the
book, four books, four sections. Book number one,
he travels to a place called Lilliput, Lilliput.
in which he meets very tiny people. I think you've
seen this before, an old, a big man, a huge man
like this, you know, tied up by young little tiny
people here. I'm not sure if you know this. I'm
also horrible at drawing, but I hope this does the
trick. So when he landed, when he just went there,
arrived, I think he was, I can't remember. was
sort of asleep somewhere, or tired and asleep, and
then they tied him up. All tiny people, like this
big. And it's interesting how he tells us how
everything shifts from the perspective of a normal
human being to a giant treating people. The next
book, he goes to a place called Probigdang. I
don't know how to pronounce this. It takes me
time.
It's not the same in the book. I think I made a
mistake here.
So fix this, please. I should fix it so you don't
write it wrong.
Okay,
so the first book, he meets these small people.
The second book, he meets giants.
Enormous, huge people. So he himself feels small.
See, the perspective changes. It puts you
sometimes as a powerful person and sometimes as a
tiny little person. It's a very interesting
experience here. Now when he tells he attacks
religion, like I said, he satirizes politics and
especially the English society. In one scene, for
example, he was talking to the king of
Brobdingnang and then The king said this. So when
he described, Gulliver told him how England,
the English people, they're living this way and
that way, telling him about the politics, about
the religion, about many things. And the man was
like, your natives, the English people at that
time, are the most pernicious race of little
odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl
upon the surface of the earth. You are the worst,
horrible, horrible people. What a life you're
living. There's no justice, there's no logic,
there's no sense of what you're doing. And this is
in a way, I wouldn't say it's indirect, it's a
direct attack against the English society at that
time. The natives, the most pernicious race of
little odious families. You're filth, you're
trash. you're not civilized you are the very
opposite of civilized. In book three he travels to
a place where he criticizes science. Everything
was being experimented on. There is a lot of
detail here to speak about, but he attacks science
and the scientific scientists of his age who
wanted to experiment on many things. I think there
was a scene where someone was trying to generate
electricity out of cucumber. He spent years and
years. He failed, but he still continued to
experiment on this. And finally, he in book four,
he meets, this is probably the most satirical of
all the books. He goes to a place where the main
characters, the civilized characters are horses.
They live in a place called, can you read this
anyone? It's the sound the horses make. Like
similar to this, like the neighing of the horses.
Poignants or something. Okay? So the horses are
civilized. The animals are civilized. And the
human beings, the yahoos, the monkey-like yahoos,
you know? Do you have a yahoo email address? You
do? That was like a long time ago. You must be
very old to have a Yahoo email address. Anyway, so
they represent humanity. So animals are more
civilized. Remember the one who said I would be a
dog? No, a rat. That's a dog, a monkey, a bear,
but not a human being. The person who said rat was
King Lear, I guess. So what does he use? He uses
satire. And his satire is very, very, very strong.
He criticizes everything openly, directly in the
book. Interesting thing here, when Gulliver's
Travels was published, I'm going to say Gulliver's
Travels was because this is still a name of a book
despite the plural. It soon turned into a
children's story, a story for kids. like huh
nobody took it seriously oh oh funny do it for the
kids do some illustrations some pictures and let
the kids enjoy it's interesting that kids started
reading at that time but why would you turn a
serious powerful satirical book into a book for
kids Maybe. To make fun of this guy. Maybe. But I
think, yeah, I agree here. He was making fun of
the English people. So the English people were
like, OK, kick this out of the canon. Throw it to
the kids. And also because he was Irish, in my
opinion. His being Irish was one reason why he
wasn't taken seriously in this sport. Next class,
probably we can speak about Swift's Modest
Proposal. Or if I have one more minute, please.
One more minute. His last text here, it's actually
an essay. It's an essay. It's called Modest
Proposal. Modest Proposal. One minute. A modest
proposal is
an article where he suggests a solution for the
many kids that the Irish families had. What is his
suggestion? What is his proposal? He says that We
have too many kids. I think the best way is to
sell them for the English people where they can
eat the kids. And he speaks about the benefits of
eating flesh, kids flesh. And many people were
like, Oh, wait, wait a minute. They hated this. So
it's funny how his serious book was taken lightly
and his ironic text was taken seriously. In this
book, he was criticizing the Irish families for
having too many kids, and he was also criticizing
the English people, the colonizers, who were in a
way or another causing the starvation and the
famine in Ireland as colonizers. Sorry for keeping
you this late. I'll stop here, and if you have a
question, you can stay a little bit. Okay, thank
you.