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Title
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[Busts of Nero, Henry VIII, and Charles IX]
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Description
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Here we see busts of Nero, Henry VIII, and Charles IX, all of whom were very unpopular rulers. Nero was the Roman Emperor from 54-68 CE. He marked the last of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty. According to Roman historians, Nero was famous for his extravagance and corruption, and many thought he “fiddled while Rome burned” during the fire in 64 CE. While this is likely a myth, Nero did take civic land that was destroyed during the fire to build a new imperial palace. Henry VIII was the King of England from 1509-1547. Like Nero, he was widely thought to be a tyrant, as he was married six times, divorcing two wives, and beheading two more. Henry VIII split with the Catholic Church in the 1530s as he tried to get his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled, creating the Church of England in the process. Charles IX was the King of France from 1560-1574. During his reign, religious wars broke out between Catholics and Protestants, and allowed the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in August 1572, where thousands of French Protestants were killed (between 5 000 to 30 000 according to modern estimates). All three of these rulers were thought to be tyrannical and immoral. The image appears in an appendix to Gulliver’s travels to Lilliput, which follows the conclusion of Gulliver’s trip to Brobdingnag. Gulliver’s description of the Lilliputian education is very negative, saying that what is taught is simply superfluous, and not anything of substance, as his bias makes him think that the European model for education is the correct model. He says that the teachers will blindly follow the emperor of Lilliput even if they are a tyrant, as many believed Nero, Henry VIII, and Charles IX to be. He also tells the reader that the Lilliputian teachers pay no attention to important dates, focusing more greatly on the character of the ruler. This method meant that students learned to judge historical figures, rather than the facts surrounding them. The same image appears in the 1843 Krabbe edition.
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Image Creator
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Grandville (Illustrator)
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Identifier
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mta:20972
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Source Name
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Gulliver's Reisen in unbekannte Länder
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Image
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Subject
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Kings and rulers
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Religious aspects
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Church of England
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Kings and rulers
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fictional works
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imaginary places
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Fictitious characters
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imaginary creatures
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Lilliput (Imaginary place)
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politics in literature
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politics and culture
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