Brobdingnag
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brobdingnag is a fictional land in Jonathan Swift's satirical novel Gulliver's Travels occupied by giants. Lemuel Gulliver visits the land after the ship on which he is traveling is blown off course to an unknown land and he is separated from a party exploring the unknown land. More plot details can be found under A Voyage to Brobdingnag. The adjective Brobdingnagian has come to describe anything of colossal size.
Contents |
[edit] Flora and Fauna
The people of Brobdingnag are described as giants who are as tall as a church and whose stride is ten yards. All of the other animals and plants are in proportion. The rats are the size of large dogs and the flies are the size of birds, for example. Fossil records are claimed to show that the ancestors of the Brobdingnagians were once even larger. The King of Brobdingnag argues that the race has deteriorated.
[edit] History and Government
Gulliver relates that, in the past, there were battles between the monarchy, nobility and people resulting in a number of civil wars ending in a treaty. The monarchy is based on reason. The King of Brobdingnag finds European institutions and behaviour wanting in comparison with his country's. Based on Gulliver's descriptions of their behaviour, the King describes Europeans as "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." (2) Swift intended the moral relationship between Europeans and Brobdingnagians to be as disproportionate as the physical relationship. The King of Brobdingnag is considered to be based on Sir William Steele, a statesman and writer, whom Swift worked for early in his career.
The army of Brobdingnag is claimed to be large with 207,000 troops including 32,000 cavalry although the society has no known enemies. The local nobility commands the forces with firearms and gunpowder being unknown. The King castigates Gulliver when he tries to interest the statesman in the use of gunpowder.
The laws of Brobdingnag are simple and easy to follow. There is little civil litigation. Murderers are beheaded.
[edit] Culture
Brobdingnagian culture consists of history, poetry, mathematics and ethics; mathematics being a particular strength. Printing has been long known but libraries are relatively small. The king has the largest library, which contains a thousand volumes. The Brobdingnagians favour a clear literary style.
[edit] Other uses
- There is also a filk group called the Brobdingnagian Bards.
- The largest bills in the world as recorded by the Guinness Book of World Records are the 100,000 Philippine peso Centennial commemorative bills, which are called brobdingnagian bills.
[edit] References
- "Jonathan Swift." Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, Volume 2: Writers of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century, 1660-1789. Gale Research, 1992.
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2005.
- "Brobdingnag" Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi, The Dictionary of Imaginary Places Harcourt Brace New York 2000 ISBN 0-15-100541-9
[edit] Footnotes
(1) Percy Adams cited in Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography Volume 2
(2) Gulliver's Travels Part 2
