An opening title card presents the 1996 film Fargo as not only based on a true story, but with the exception of name changes made to requested by survivors, a film that presents the events of this true story exactly as they happened. In fact, not a single event presented in Fargo is based on a true story (Chaloupka 163). On the other hand, the opening credits of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid significantly tone down its claims of authenticity compared to Fargo with a title card suggesting that "Most of the following is true" and then continuing to deliver on that promise surprisingly well. for a Hollywood western. Between these two extremes lies a seemingly endless number of films that claim to be factual, but deliver the goods in a surprisingly inconsistent manner. In the way that Hollywood constantly tries to give its product some sort of greater value by claiming authenticity, it would seem that the distrust of fiction so strongly advocated by Plato thousands of years ago stays firmly in place (Halliwell 50). Much of the voluminous satire that permeates every page of Gulliver's Travels is directed at this deep-seated suspicion of the value of fiction and the often ridiculous extremes to which creative artists will go to create value in their own creations by attaching a perception of authenticity which, paradoxically, is completely fictitious. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Distrust of fiction is always at its greatest when the medium used to disseminate that fiction is new and unfamiliar. This was the case with the novel at the time when Jonathan Swift was composing Gulliver's Travels. When this new means of presenting fiction appeared at a time when scientific exploration was beginning to supplant ancient notions of religion, superstition and myth, the assertion of empirical verisimilitude within fiction took on even greater importance. bigger. "The transfer of details into overt fictions can create verisimilitude, because it appropriates from fiction a strategy for recording reality, the world of raw and unignorable facts. But the impulse that results from this involves manners of thought and experience rather than rhetoric calculated to convince skeptics "The novelists repeatedly assured readers that the substance of their story was real and historical and that their account was accurate - reporting on current events. " (Hunter 200). Nowhere, perhaps, does Swift respond to this painful need of the authors of the first British novels of the period. In the reader's mind, a curious recognition of a quantifiable authenticity only when he asked Gulliver to provide for the first time an excruciatingly detailed account of what it was like to eat, sleep and go to the toilet among the giants of Brobdingnag, it was as if only he then explained why he had just I spent so much time explaining a situation that the reader barely needs to know about. “I hope the kind reader will excuse me for dwelling on these and other details of the same kind; which, however insignificant they may appear to common groveling minds, will certainly aid a philosopher to enlarge his thoughts and imagination, and to apply them for the benefit of public as well as private life; which was my sole design in presenting this and other accounts of my travels in the world*; in which I have been chiefly a student of the truth, without affecting any ornamentof learning or style” (Swift 82). One can only imagine what kind of philosopher might be able to expand his thinking and imagination to the point of using the information Gulliver provides on any of the topics he details in such detail, but Gulliver provides a clue in the form of a satirical arrow fired with great precision when he admits to having edited "several passages of less importance which were in my first copy, for fear of being censored". as tedious and insignificant, which travelers are often accused, perhaps not without justice” (Swift 82). The “travelers” whom Swift targets for overusing details intended to convey a greater sense of verisimilitude and a voice of authority are not the Irish. Gypsies selling their wares, but writers of travel adventures who were a hugely popular antecedent to the novel and an essential element in its beginnings. “Early novelists openly tried to capitalize on the contemporary popularity of travel books by suggesting the sameness of their products” (Hunter 353) and one of the most successful was Daniel Defoe, Aphra Behn and other early English novelists all manage to incorporate a bit of travel adventure into many of their stories and adopting techniques to establish authenticity is an essential element. The preface is one of the prototypes of the modern novel. Perhaps Jonathan Swift was as baffled by the necessity of a work of fiction requiring preliminary material as the modern reader. Most novelists today and for some time have not felt the need to provide information in the form of a preface, which is a stylistic convention generally associated with nonfiction material. English novels of the 18th century almost invariably contained a preface and usually with the aim of creating this false sense of authenticity. The preparatory material for 18th-century novels was the “Based on a True Story” of film and television. The fact that the preface is associated with nonfiction and used extensively in these novels is neither coincidental nor accidental. Their sole objective is to establish in the reader the idea that he is about to read something real and faithful, if not necessarily factual. Such is the absurdity inherent in the preface of many novels aimed at establishing such veracity that Swift provides a satirical perspective on them in the form of not two, but three different prefaces existing only for the purpose of creating a foundation of reality. for the story which finally begins on a dozen pages. The advertisement, Captain Gulliver's letter to his cousin Sympson, and the publisher's direct address to the reader would - in a work of non-fiction - help set the stage. of the credibility of the story they are about to read. In the hands of English novelists who adopted the preface to their works of fiction, the material accomplished much the same thing. In Jonathan Swift's hands, however, the cutting edge of sharp satire that is the intention of the preliminary material achieved achieves deadly weapon status with the appearance that the editor himself takes the time to publicly assure to readers that there is “an air of truth apparent in the whole; and indeed the author was so distinguished for his truthfulness* that it became a sort of deadly weapon.” of proverb among his neighbors at Redriff, when any one asserted a thing, to say that it was as true as if Mr. Gulliver had said it" (Sympson xxxvii). That Defoe may once more be considered a target privilege of Swift's satire seems quite easy to prove if we consider the very similar statement by the supposed editor of Robinson Crusoe according to, 1998.