ABSTRACT
Like scenic views, bird's-eye views, often called 'prospects,' but their use was limited to the pictorial representation of proximate spaces like gardens, palaces and towns. Compared to the other kinds of representations of geographical space, bird's-eye views have never been numerous, and the place they occupy in travelling narratives has always been modest. To deal with them is to focus on a detail of the verbal medium. "A Voyage to Brobdingnag" continues the geographical fiction and discussion of bird's-eye views. In Book II of the Travels, Gulliver is made to cut a ridiculous figure. To produce an intelligible picture of the situation, the eighteenth-century geographer would use conventional symbols or pictures and have recourse to "measuring instruments – compasses and scales," as Lucia Nuti puts it. Not so the satirist who relies on figurative language and, what is more, a most fanciful simile as a shortcut to depict the situation.
