[invention from The Grand Academy on Balnibarbi to create a complete body of language] · Centre for Early Modern Visual Culture

Title: [invention from The Grand Academy on Balnibarbi to create a complete body of language]
Period: 1800-1850;
Description: Here we see an image of a machine created by one of the professors from the Grand Academy on Balnibarbi. This machine had all the words in the language of Balnibarbi in different moods, tenses, and declensions written on blocks. These blocks were held together by wires on a frame, and students of the professor would rotate the handles, forming different arrangements of the words. They would then find sentence fragments and record them in this book. The goal of this experiment was to create a complete body of work that comprised all of the arts and sciences. The same image appears in the 1843 Krabbe edition.
Image Creator: Grandville (Illustrator)
Type: StillImage; Book Illustrations
Identifier: mta:21008
Language: ger
Source Name: Gulliver's Reisen in unbekannte Länder
Parent Collection: 1839 Stuttgart Grandville vol. 2; 1839 Stuttgart Grandville vol. 2
Image: mta_21008_OBJ.png
Collection: Gulliver's Travels
Subject: scholars in literature; Scientists in literature; satire; language; fictional works; imaginary places; Fictitious characters; imaginary creatures