Showing results for "Swift" in Literature & Fiction

A Signature Performance: Four-time Emmy Award winner David Hyde Pierce delivers an air of lovable self-importance in his rendition of the classic social satire that remains as fresh today as the day it was published.

Andrew Sachs reads Jonathan Swift's humorous and unforgettable tale of a strange man in some very strange lands. Gulliver had always wanted to see the world. But whenever he steps on board a ship, bad luck always seems near at hand. He is shipwrecked, abandoned, marooned and mutinied against - and each time lands in a strange and curious place.

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests in his essay that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling children as food. By doing this he mocks the authority of the British officials.

Gulliver's Travels describes the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon. In Lilliput he discovers a world in miniature; towering over the people and their city, he is able to view their society from the viewpoint of a god. However, in Brobdingnag, a land of giants, tiny Gulliver himself comes under observation, exhibited as a curiosity at markets and fairs. In Laputa, a flying island, he encounters a society of speculators and projectors who have lost all grip on everyday reality; while they plan and calculate, their country lies in ruins.

For the first time since university, James and Roland's paths through life - one drawn in straight lines, the other squiggled and meandering - began to cross... James Drayton has always found things too easy. By the time he leaves university, he's still searching for a challenge worthy of his ambitions, one that will fulfil the destiny he thinks awaits him. Roland Mackenzie, on the other hand, is an impulsive risk-taker, a charismatic drifter with boundless enthusiasm but a knack for derailing his own attempts to get started in life.

Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), officially Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, is a novel by Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travelers' tales" literary sub-genre. It is widely considered Swift's magnum opus and is his most celebrated work, as well as one of the indisputable classics of English literature.View our full collection of podcasts at our website: https://www.solgoodmedia.com or YouTube channel: https://www.solgood.org/subscribe Check out our ad free subscription: http://www.adfreesounds.com for our Premium, 10 Hour ...

Lemuel Gulliver, a slightly staid ship’s doctor, relates the tales of his astonishing travels. He encounters the tiny, warring Lilliputians; the giant, sceptical Brobdingnagians; the ludicrously intellectual Laputans; and the idealistic - if rather stolid - Houyhnhnms and their bestial servants, the Yahoos. An immediate best seller when it was first published in 1726, Gulliver’s Travels has remained a favourite ever since. It was an attack on the politics and society of Swift’s day, but it is also a polemical, inventive, surreal, vitriolic, and wonderfully imaginative masterpiece.

“Moira Quirk's narration of this fantasy is outstanding...Quirk is a master of accents, which she employs to great advantage.”—AudioFile (Earphones Award Winner) The Witcher meets Howl’s Moving Castle in this debut original faerie tale of revenge, redemption, and friendship—for fans of...

The Ultimate Classics Collection: Volume Three is the third instalment of our wide-ranging classic collections. Volume Three features 10 essential works that reach further back into early Greek and Italian stories from Dante, Machiavelli, and Homer, as-well as comparatively modern works from Daniel Defoe, Henry David Thoreau, and others. Read by a cast of incredible narrators including David Rintoul; Daniel Weyman; Rachel Atkins; and more, this is a chance to expand your listening by going back to some of the earliest pieces of classic literature.

A wickedly clever satire uses comic inversions to offer telling insights into the nature of man and society. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. Gulliver's Travels describes the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon. In Lilliput he discovers a world in miniature; towering over the people and their city, he is able to view their society from the viewpoint of a god. However, in Brobdingnag, a land of giants, tiny Gulliver himself comes under observation, exhibited as a curiosity at markets and fairs.

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a timeless exploration of the human spirit seen through the eyes of an adventurous traveler. In this work, Swift offers a playful yet clear reflection on society without detailing every fact. Instead, he invites readers to uncover hidden lessons through a series of curious encounters and unexpected adventures. The narrative gently nudges us to question the ways we live and the institutions that shape our lives, all while delighting us with visions of strange lands and unusual peoples.

Dive into this captivating 1905 collection of short animal stories, where the author brings to life a world of adventure and insight. Some of these delightful tales were first published in magazines, offering a unique glimpse into the authors imaginative storytelling. - Summary by David Wales

One of the most-studied pieces of satire in history, ‘A Modest Proposal’ is a darkly funny yet scathing critique of British colonialism from an Irish lens. First published in 1729 to much backlash, Swift goes to great lengths to illustrate a potential solution to poverty and overpopulation in Ireland: parents undergoing economic hardship ought to sell their children as food for the upper classes. A masterclass in irony, Swift delves into the financial benefits of his suggestion, even offering numerous ways to prepare babies for consumption.

Soon I felt something alive moving along my leg and up my body to my face, and when I looked down, I saw a very small human being, only 15 centimetres tall . . . I was so surprised that I gave a great shout. ’But that is only the first of many surprises which Gulliver has on his travels. He visits a land of giants and a flying island, meets ghosts from the past and horses which talk. An Oxford Bookworms Library reader for learners of English, adapted from the Jonathan Swift original by Clare West.

Codfather & Co, a small British Fish & Chip shop which opened in the 1950s has, through luck, hard graft and shady underworld connections, grown from its humble origins to become a diverse multinational conglomerate with its fins in many pies. It's the Amazon of chippies. This surreal Podcast written and created entirely by children, for children, mixes surreal sketches, weird fiction and 'out-of-this-world-building,' with magazine style articles and heated debates.

From the childhood nostalgia of Peter Pan in Speak Now to the haunted halls of Rebecca in Evermore, Taylor Swift’s lyrics are packed with literary connections. Make sure you’re catching them all with this expert guide to the novels, poems, and plays that influenced her songwriting. Let a literature professor and a musical theater artist guide you through the Swift canon—from Shakespeare to Dickinson to the Brontë sisters. Learn what “New Romantics” has to do with the old Romantics, get to know the Gothic monsters haunting Midnights, and spot Taylor’s many Great Gatsby references.

This curated collection brings together five iconic works from some of Ireland's greatest writers, each offering a distinct voice and vision that helped shape modern Irish literature. From gothic horror to modernist experimentation, biting satire to fading aristocracy, these novels capture the complexities of identity, society, and imagination across centuries.

Jonathan Swifts Werke werden mit Recht dem Kanon der Welt-Literatur zugerechnet, weil sie das widerspiegeln, was dem jeweiligen Zeitgeist entspricht und weil ihre Erzählungen von dem handeln, was von zeitloser Ästhetik und Würde ist.

Things in the Middle Florida Keys aren’t as idyllic as they seem. If one looks closely, there’s a layer of dirt just below the surface. The butt-ugly kind of dirt that’s hard to get off. Things move slowly in the Keys—locals call it island time—but there are some for whom it seems that time is at a standstill; whose clocks revolve only around the tides, fish migrations, and the rising and setting of the sun and moon. Jesse McDermitt remembers the Keys the way he’d first found them as a young man.

'A thrilling, immersive and beautifully written historical novel that will resonate long after the last page is turned. Highly recommended' MARIUS GABRIEL 'Taut, compelling and beautifully written – I loved it!’ DAISY WOOD The Enemy's Wife, Book 2 in the series, is available to order now! 'I...