Liliput (fictional island)

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Map of Lilliput southwest of Sumatra (Illustration by Herman Moll for the first edition of Gulliver's Travels from 1726)

Jonathan Swift describes the island of Liliput (in the English original: Lilliput ) in the novel Gulliver's Travels . Tiny people live here, the Lilliputians.

Dr. Lemuel Gulliver wakes up after a shipwreck on the coast of Liliput and is captured, although he is a "mountain of people" twelve times the size of the inhabitants. The Lilliputians have been fighting with the inhabitants of the island of Blefuscu for years over the question of how to crack a boiled egg: at the pointy or at the blunt end. The Lilliputians take the view that it should be turned on the pointed side, the Blefuscans advocate the thick side. This parodies the conflict between the Anglican and Catholic Churches over the understanding of the Eucharist .

The island of Liliput is said to be next to the island of Blefuscu between the Australian south coast and Tasmania . According to the English cartographer Herman Moll , who made the maps for Swift's novels, the two islands are located south of Sumatra , i.e. in the eastern Indian Ocean (see illustration).

The main inner belt asteroid (2952) Lilliputia is named after Liliput.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On the map you can see Van Diemen's Land ( Tasmania ) in the south . It would be located west of Australia, assuming Sumatra was correctly mapped.
  2. ^ Note by William Cooke Taylor in Jonathan Swift : Gulliver's travels and adventures in Lilliput and Brobdingnag , Leavitt, Trow & Co., New York 1847, p. 139 (English)
  3. ↑ … were driven northwest of Van Diemens Land . Through nautical observations, we determined that in the second minute of the 30th degree south latitude ... (see here)
  4. ^ Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 3-540-29925-4 , pp. 186 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-540-29925-7_2953 (English, 992 pages, original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “1979 SF 2 . Discovered 1979 Sept. 22 by NS Chernykh at Nauchnyj. "