Quijote and Gulliver

As I read the introduction and the notes that came before the first actual chapter in Gulliver’s Travels I found that many things were similar to Don Quixote. Although the later is written almost 100 years before the first, I find that many things are similar in these few first pages. The first similarity I found was the fact that there were several preambles to the actual story. The book does not begin at once but it has some letters to the reader and then to the editor before they start. In both of the books these letters are metafiction, because although they are really written by Cervantes and Swift respectively they are supposed to be written by someone else who will be writing the story which is then published by someone else who also gets the chance to speak. The first time the concept is presented it is confusing to understand what is going on because the change in narrators who are really the same person can be confusing. However, as the reader gets used to this I think that the polyphony of the text is very useful in satirical writing as is the case with both works. With this tactic the writer can make comments about the comments he has made in the book and create some sort of debate on topics. By doing this in satire the writer also confuses who is writing and gets to “apologize” to the reader in an ironic way that would really be due to censorship. I really appreciated the effect this had on Don Quixote and I hope the same effect will take place with this book.

Another similarity that I picked up on, and this is not only between the two books but also between other such as Lazarillo de Tormes and some other texts from Garcilaso De la Vega as well as other writers of the time, is that before they start they undermine their writing and the readers skills. The fact that they say that their writing is less than what people would expect and that they apologize beforehand for any mistakes they make shows alleged modesty, but I think what they were trying to do was lower the reader’s expectations so that in the end they will hold the book in even higher regard. They might also be trying to make fun of the reader because they know that the reader knows that they think their texts are very good and this makes the whole thing funny. Swift does the same thing and before starting states that his style is simple and his writing basic, and I believe he does so with the afore mentioned purposes.

The last thing I saw in the first part that they have in common is that “My hours of leisure I spent in reading the best Authors, ancient and modern, being always provided with a good number of books.” (Swift, pg. 2) It is also mentioned in Gulliver’s Travels that many people did not believe in him but that regardless of that he knew that his travels and experiences were the truth. As Don Quixote, Gulliver is reading a lot and what I thought of as I read this was that there might be the possibility that Swift is making fun of Cervantes with this allusion to his character that spent his time reading books and then came up with crazy ideas, as Gulliver’s ideas might seem. Also we can see that people were doubtful of the validity of Gulliver’s stories such as they were of Don Quixote’s because both are ideas that at the time they were presented would signal that the person was crazy and had no limits between reality and imagination.