Gulliver’s patriotism is one of his defining characteristics, and wherever he goes he does his best to defend British culture against the criticisms of the people he meets. It’s not until he meets the Yahoos, and sees human nature at its most brutal and primitive in contrast with the virtue of the Houyhnhnms (talking horses – yeah, I know), that he begins to see western civilisation in a bit more perspective.

Well this ain’t misogynist at all. Gulliver’s Travels uses the travel genre to put forward ideas about the differences between cultures, as well as the universal human condition. No problems so far – but Swift’s ideas about the universal human condition include the idea that women are universally bad. It’s one of the things that makes the book a bit less admirable than it could have been.

An ironic reference to prostitutes, who were notoriously ugly because of their poverty and often suffered from STDs.

The Houyhnhnms have no concept of money, consistent with Swift’s idea of a utopia where the systems of politics and economics are stripped down to the bare essentials, leaving no room for corruption. Because as 1 Timothy 6:10 says, mo money mo problems.

Thomas More’s Utopia similarly tries to imagine a world with no concept of money: there, gold is almost valueless simply because it’s an impractical metal.

Queen Anne ruled England, Scotland and Ireland from 1707-1714, and oversaw its union as the Kingdom of Great Britain.

i.e. As poisoners. Doctors in the early-eighteenth century were probably better at killing people than they were at curing them: before the discoveries of antibiotics, vaccination, x-ray and so on, medicine was pretty hit-and-miss. And it’s easier to accidentally kill someone than to accidentally save their life, so they got pretty good at killing people on purpose too.

Swift often comments on how universally selfish and shit the human race is. Here he argues that princes are “never” satisfied with what they have: they’re always greedy for more.

He’s arguably inconsistent on this point: he suggests in Gulliver’s Travels that humans are naturally corrupt, while at the same time presenting idealistic visions of governments who have no concept of corruption (such as the Houyhnhnms, here, or earlier in the book the King of Brobdingnag). These ideals are supposed to expose the state’s corruption through satire – but it seems a pointless task if that corruption can never be rooted out.

A satire on the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation (that the bread and wine at Mass literally becomes the body and blood of Christ). The Church of England has rejected this view since the reign of Edward VI. Violence between Protestants and Catholics goes on to this day, notably in Northern Ireland. The whole controversy centres around a verse in Matthew 26:

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.

A hanger is a type of 17th-18th century sword, similar to a cutlass. Gulliver always carries his with him. It often saves his life.

Weird as this sounds, it was a common complaint of explorers in Swift’s time: Lionel Wafer and William Dampier both complained of being pooed on by monkeys in Panama.

Swift finds shit and piss extremely funny, and several times in Gulliver’s Travels the hero gives an account of his answers to the call of nature, which sometimes even play a part in the plot. This has a deeper effect than just making us laugh, though: by bringing our image of humanity back to basic bodily functions, Swift puts the more abstract politics, cultural systems and social hierarchies which he’s satirising into perspective. When it boils down to it, no culture’s successfully made shitting dignified.