The career of Swift is one of the magnificient chapters of English literature. To understand his works we should know some important events of his life, which may have influenced him and also the political background without which Gulliver would not have been born.The life of Jonathan Swift spanned a time of significant religious and political change in England and Europe.
Both the monarchy and the absolute power of the Roman Catholic Church were in decline in the 16th and 17th centuries, during and after the European Enlightenment. On the other hand, the power of the upper middle class, in particular the banking and merchant class, was on the rise. The result was political and social instability and upheaval and endless political blickering it caused. (Kenneth Brodey, 52-54.)
In 1667, Jonathan Swift was born to an upper-class British family living in Dublin, Ireland. …
