GULLIVER'S TRAVELS by JONATHAN SWIFT

About This Project: Questions Answered

This Site

I want to ask your permission to include a link on my home page to the Gulliver's Travels page.

I have no problem with having this site linked (unless it's a list of the worst Web sites), but it nice to know where it is listed and, in many cases, I may want to provide a reciprocal link.

I came across your page of images from the original edition of the book, and would like to use one or more of them in a scholarly paper that I am about to prepare. But I wanted to make certain I had your blessing, and that I wasn't violating any copyright

Would you mind if I borrowed your scanning effort on one of your Swift portraits?

While none of the material I've reproduced at my site is protected by copyright -- I am real careful about that -- some of it has been obtained by agreeing to certain conditions. The Bancroft allowed me to have reproductions of the illustrations from their 1726 edition and to mount them at this site only after I agreed to limits on their use. I don't feel like I have the right then to give someone else permission to use them. However, I do have other versions of these images with no strings attached which I can provide in response to such requests.

The bald truth is that I can't prevent anyone from taking what they want from my site. I knew that when I started and I work within that reality. The net depends more on karma than laws; not always a good bet but not completely without teeth either.

i was wondering if you could take the entire web site (all the files, images and all) and zip them up into one file and email it to me.

No, but for a couple of very good reasons.

1. That's a lot of work for me and I can think of easier ways to get the text. Take your pick from the sources listed at http://www.jaffebros.com/lee/gulliver/sources/gulliver.html
2. I don't consider my version done and I'm not ready to propagate unfinished versions of the work around the network.

Under movies, thought you might want to include the 1995 Gulliver's Travels starring Ted Danson (Cheers), Mary Steenburgen, and Peter O'Toole.

I hated Danson's version because of the ways I thought it disrespected Swift's text. Some points are minor, like turning Dr. Bates, Gulliver's mentor who dies in the first few paragraphs, into the villain of the story. It's not that Bates was abused by the TV version, but a whole drama of Gulliver's return was added. One of the structural elements of Swift's story is that Gulliver is credible. If his veracity is doubted, it is only for a moment, until he produces physical evidence (small sheep, a footman's tooth...). If you doubt Gulliver, what do you have?

It therefore helps that Swift has Gulliver return after each adventure. I can only think that the TV version kept him away the whole four stories in order to develop the Dr. Bates plot and give Mary Steenburgen a part. Let's see; husband presumed lost at sea is struggling through many strange adventure to return home while wife fends off suitors in the hope that husband will return. On return husband faces opposition from suitors, but overcomes them with the help of his son. Should I mention that the same team produced the Odyssey the following year?