A Comparative Study of Gulliver’s Travels and Flowers in the Mirror.docVIP

A Comparative Study of Gulliver’s Travels and Flowers in the Mirror Abstract: Gulliver’s travels, written by Jonathan Swift, the famous eighteenth century English satirical writer, and Flowers in the Mirror, written in late Qing Dynasty by the Chinese satirical writer, Li Ruzhen, are written completely according to the respective national cultural traditions. Yet inspite of the distance between them in both times and space, the two authors of different nationalities happen to hold the same views and resemble each other amazingly in their choices of the theme, the literary genre, the structure of the fiction, and the artistic devices. In both Gulliver’s Travels and Flowers in the Mirror, many aspects of life are covered, including politics, culture, education, morality and ethics. The writers criticize every kind of malpractices and express their longing for an ideal society and a better future. Of course, in the arrangement of detailed plots, there are some differences between the two fictions. For instance, there are some differences between the two authors’ viewpoints toward the problems existing in the overseas countries; the protagonists’ professions and their aims of sailing are also different. This paper tries to analyze the similarities and differences between the two works, so that the reader can know more about the two works and the differences between western and eastern culture. Key words: Gulliver’s Travels; Flowers in the Mirror; comparative study Introduction Gulliver’s travels is a novel written by the eighteenth century British writer Jonathan Swift, which recounts the story of an Englishman named Lemuel Gulliver. Through Gulliver’s adventures in Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Houyhnhnms, and other strange countries, Swift mirrors the social conflicts of England in the 18th century, exposes the corruption of the ruling class and their robbery and exploitation of others in their capital accumulation. Flowers in the mirror is the extinguished work of a Chi