Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
Written in four parts, it describes the travels of Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon (= medico) on a merchant ship, to Lilliput, a land inhabited ( peopled = abitata) by tiny (very small = piccolissime) people ( their diminutive makes sall their pompous activities absurd); to Brobdingnag, a land populated by giants (very big people = giganti) who are amused (enjoyed = divertiti) when Gulliver tells them about the glories of England; to Laputa and its neighbour (0 vicino) Lagado, peopled(inhabited) by false (impostor) philosophers and scientists; and to the land of the Houyhnhnms, where horses behave ( = si comportano) with reason and men, called Yahoos, behave as beasts.
Its main themes are a satirical view of the state of European government, and of insignificant differences between religions; an inquiry ( = inchiesta) into whether( if = se) men are inherently corrupt or whether they become corrupted and an interpretation of the older “ancients versus moderns” controversy previously addressed by Swift in The Battle of the Books.
As the story goes on, each part is the reverse of the preceding part : Gulliver is big/small/wise/ignorant, the countries are complex/simple/scientific/natural, forms of government are worse/better/worse/better than England
The conclusion is that no form of government is ideal and every individual may be good even where the race is bad.
Gulliver himself progresses from an optimist vision at the start of the first part to the pompous misanthrope idea of the book’s conclusion. In this sense Gulliver’s Travels is a very modern and complex novel.
Despite the depth (= profondità) and subtlety (= sottigliezza) of the book, it is often classified as a children’s story because of the popularity of the Lilliput section and of the many adaptations into cartoon and movies.