How Gulliver’s Travels drew on Robinson Crusoe
A documented line of influence: Jonathan Swift demonstrably engaged Daniel Defoe’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe · 1719
EnlightenmentThe influenced
Gulliver’s Travels
Jonathan Swift · 1726
EnlightenmentRelevance
7/10
On Gulliver’s Travels’s page
- Gulliver's Travels is in large part a send-up of Robinson Crusoe and the solemn traveler's tale Defoe had made fashionable
- That jab at travelers who detail every meal "as if the readers were personally concerned whether we fared well or ill" is a direct dig at Crusoe's earnest provision-keeping
- Knowing Defoe's straight-faced castaway first sharpens every parody — you see exactly what Swift is laughing at
On Robinson Crusoe’s page
- The castaway-survival tale Swift set out to skewer — Gulliver's Travels reads as a deliberate parody of Crusoe and the whole earnest traveler's-tale genre
- Crusoe's loving inventories of food and provisions are exactly what Gulliver mocks: "other travellers fill their books, as if the readers were personally concerned whether we fared well or ill"
- Defoe played the shipwreck straight; seven years later Swift weaponized the same form into satire