jonathan swift's Gullivers Travels is considered by many to be one of the most important pieces of literature ever written. During Swift's lifetime, satire was a popular form of writing. It sought to highlight absurd practices by taking a practice and the ideas related to it to an extreme degree. Satire lies at the heart of Gulliver's Travels. swit used this form of writing to criticize many of the ideas and practices of eighteenth- century Europe.