Stifled with Filth: The Body as Critique of Mankind in Gulliver's Travels and Ulysses

Throughout history, mankind’s stories about heroic men have tended to leave out one significant detail: the fact that even heroes shit. My senior thesis focuses on two Irish classics that not only include but relish the less... [ view full abstract ]

Throughout history, mankind’s stories about heroic men have tended to leave out one significant detail: the fact that even heroes shit. My senior thesis focuses on two Irish classics that not only include but relish the less savory aspects of humanity: excrement, deformity, and sexuality. Both Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and James Joyce’s Ulysses use the physical body as a way of revealing the moral flaws of mankind, but for very different reasons. Swift displays the reality of the body in order to break down the delusion of mankind’s perfection and grandeur, turning him into a ridiculous figure. In contrast, Joyce takes a ridiculous figure and gives him an element of nobility. In displaying the grotesqueness of the body, Swift’s purpose is to debase man and force him to recognize his flaws, while Joyce’s purpose is to elevate man and show that this flawed creature can still have dignity.