La grande Académie de Lagado (document en anglais)

The grand Academy of Lagado

This text is an extract from « Gulliver's travels »a famous novel by Jonathan Swift,an Irish writer of the 18è century. It describes an imaginary academy with an exotic name, composed of a series of laboratories where researches work on various projects.

The first of these laboratories is occupied by a man whose physical aspect is quite slovenly, poor, showing marks of burns.His experiments musn't be very safe.

His jobs consitsin trying getiing in a stock of sunshine by means of cucumbers, and so far has been unsuccessful.

In a second room, an architect says he has succeded in building houses beginning with the top ; this is told very seriously :»a most ingenious...» «two prudent insects»,but one can’t help doubting such a strange device.

The third and fourth projects can seem more attainable : to have a field ploughed by pigs, to feed spiders in such a way as to get strong coloured threads, but the third projector confess his failure till now, and the fourth project is not yet achieved.

Lastly an astronomer, the word impresses ,seems to have the most unrealistic plan joining the notions of the earth, the sun and the wind; one may say that he has his head in the clouds.

One has to notice that Swift uses the word «projector»instead of «inventor» to suggestthat no real result is obtained by those amateur scientists.

They stay in the field of dream, having utopian ideasand thiking they are great engineers.Their projects are mere idiotic aping of natural fact, without making sure that they are workable or profitable.

Swift’s vast imagination doesn’t disdain the minutest details that will convince;what with the liveliness of the account, the readerslive the scene,and even if they know it is unreal, they are led to support the underlying criticism.

one can note that this academy has bee built along a street growing waste and there are more than five hundred rooms with one or more projectors in each of them, which conveys the idea of the vast number and the uselessness of these intellectuels living as parasites in the community.

Their cranky plans are dh the described with the usual seriousness of scientists to suggest how seriously those projectors take themselves unaware of their irrelevance to reality.(C f Rabelais «the realm of Queen Quinte Essence»)

This academy is really the domain of utopia

This passsage is quite representative of the works of Swift, who is renowned mainly for his talent for social and political satire

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