Phillips 1 James Phillips Dr. Forster Research Report 4.25.2013 Fictional and Thematic Narrative in Part One of Gulliver's Travels In the years following the British Restoration in 1660, literary culture underwent a great and sudden evolutionary event. After over a decade without a monarch, British culture flourished with the return of Charles II as king. The theaters that had been closed with the beginning of the civil wars in 1642 were reopened (Yadav). Topics that had long been considered taboo were discussed publicly at great length. Attacks on political figures and organized religion abounded and sex became a source of much humor and intrigue. This culture of wit, sarcasm, and shameless personal attacks was a fertile breeding ground for the development of satire, which Oxford English Dictionary defines as “The employment, in speaking or writing, of sarcasm, irony, ridicule, etc. in exposing, denouncing, deriding, or ridiculing vice, folly, indecorum, abuses, or evils of any kind” (OED). One of the best known early practitioners of British satire was Jonathon Swift. His essay titled A Modest Proposal, published in 1729, garnered a great deal of attention, both negative and supportive, for its suggestion that the Irish living in extreme poverty ought to sell their children as food for the upper classes (Swift, A Modest Proposal). The essay, published as a pamphlet, is considered a prime example of extended irony, following the rules and structure of classic Latin satire. In 1726, several years before A Modest Proposal was published, Swift published what eventually became his most widely read work, originally titled Travels into Several Remote Nations of the