Political condition in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver's Travels as a portrait of political condition of England in Eighteenth Century

ABSTRACT

Literary works cannot be separated from people’s life. Moreover, literary works have many functions. One of them is to be the mediator between the hidden fact and the society. Literary work is one of the best mediators to show the portrait of the fact that happened, because literary works do not have limitation to explore, improve, and increase its value. Sometimes, literary work is able to cover the weaknesses of a society.

Especially novel, it has its function depend on the readers. It can entertain the readers by its interesting story. In another hand, the story in the novel can explore the real fact that not all of people know it. An author will write the thing that he saw, he feel, and he heard. Some novels that we read can be the portraits of the society around the author or around us. Sometimes, as the readers we do not realize that the novel that we read consist of many things about our surrounding.

Gulliver's Travels is a novel that explores the political condition related to the monarch government in its era. Related to this case, the problem of the study can be formatted; 1. How is the political condition described in Gulliver ’s Travels? 2. What is the homology between the political condition in Gulliver's Travels and the real political condition of England in 18" century? The purpose of this study are to identify the political condition in Gulliver's Travels and to find out the similarity between political conditions described in Gulliver's Travels and the real political condition of England in 18" century.

This study use literary criticism in analyzing this novel, because literary criticism is a method that directly related to the literary work. In addition, the researcher uses Genetic Structuralism as her approach because this research related to extrinsic aspects but still keep relevant with intrinsic aspect. Those aspects are the political condition in Gulliver's Travels and politic condition in the history.

As the result it will find the homology between two political conditions, the political condition in Swift’s Gulliver's Travels and the political condition of England in Eighteenth Century. The political condition concern with some political terms that appeared in the novel and happened to the history. They are power, conflict and coalition. In this research the portrait of political condition of England in Eighteenth Century is explored in an adventurous novel. It is hoped that this research can be used as reference for further researchers