ABSTRACT
At the end of the first part of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), narrator Lemuel Gulliver finds himself in a difficult position after escaping the island nations of Lilliput and Blefuscu, and being taken on board an English vessel. He discovers that he has considerable trouble in convincing the ship’s captain that his incredible story of shipwreck in a miniature land is a true account of his travels. Luckily, in the miniature objects and specimens he has brought with him from Blefuscu, Swift’s narrator has the material proof needed to transform the fantastic into the authentic. Gulliver describes the English captain’s reaction when he was shown these unusual things: “he thought I was raving, and that the dangers I had underwent had disturbed my head; whereupon I took my black cattle and sheep out of my pocket, which, after great astonishment, clearly convinced him of my veracity.” 1 The implausible nature of his tale and the prevalent skepticism of eyewitness accounts in the early eighteenth century require that Gulliver supplement his visual experience of other lands with imported livestock and material objects—including two hundred tiny gold coins and a diminutive portrait of the Blefuscan emperor—in order to prove the veracity of his travel narrative to the captain. The lands of Lilliput and Blefuscu, figments of Swift’s imagination, are used to poke fun at the novel’s characters, Gulliver and the captain, and at the curious readers of the traveler’s tales.
