How Devils drew on Gulliver’s Travels
A documented line of influence: Fyodor Dostoevsky demonstrably engaged Jonathan Swift’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Gulliver’s Travels
Jonathan Swift · 1726
EnlightenmentThe influenced
Devils
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1872
The Age of the NovelRelevance
4/10
On Devils’s page
- Devils tips its hand on the first page by reaching for Swift — Stepan Trofimovich is Gulliver returned from Lilliput, a giant only in his own imagination
- Dostoevsky lifts the image whole, the man crying out to carriages to make way; meeting Swift's traveler first lets you catch exactly how cruelly the comparison cuts
On Gulliver’s Travels’s page
- Swift's satiric image of Gulliver opens one of the great Russian novels: on its first page, Dostoevsky likens the deluded liberal Stepan Trofimovich to Gulliver back from Lilliput
- A man "grown so accustomed to consider himself a giant" that he shouts at passers-by to get out of his way — Swift's deflating comedy borrowed to set the mocking tone of Devils