The location of Glubdubdrib is illustrated in both the text and the map at the beginning of part III of Gulliver's Travels, though they are not consistent with each other.
The map shows Glubdubdrib to be southwest of the port of Maldonada on the southwest coast of Luggnagg,[3] while the text states the island is southwest of Balnibarbi, and Maldonada to be a port of that land.[4]
Description
Glubbdubdrib is about one third as large as the Isle of Wight. The inhabitants of Glubbdubdrib can wield magic, and most of their technology is utilized through magical means. The eldest in succession is prince or governor of the island. He has a 'noble' palace, and a park of about three thousand acres, surrounded by a wall of hewn stone twenty foot high.[5]
On visiting Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver had the occasion, thanks to the power of their necromancers, to speak with Brutus of ancient Rome, whom Gulliver greatly admired, among many other famous historical personages, including Socrates. Many ideas of historians were corrected this way. Gulliver spends five days doing this, then three days looking at some of the 'modern' dead, trying to find the greatest figure in the past 200 or 300 years in his country and others in Europe. Gulliver gets a new view of historians and heroes, claiming 'I was chiefly disgusted with modern History'.[6]
Further reading
"Gulliver’s 'Temple of Fame': Glubbdubdrib Revisited" by Dirk Passman, Helgard Stöver-Leidig and Hermann Real, Reading Swift: Papers from The Fourth Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift Ed. Hermann J. Real and Helgard Stöver-Leidig (München, Germany: Wilhelm Sink Verlag, 2003), 329-48.
