An opening title card introduces the 1996 film Fargo as a film not only based on a true story, but with the exception of name changes made at the request of the survivors , a film that proceeds to present the events of that true story exactly as they occurred. 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 undercut its claims to authenticity compared to Fargo with a title card that suggests that "Most of what follows is true" and then proceeds to deliver on that promise surprisingly Well. for a Hollywood western. Between these two extremes lie a seemingly infinite number of films that claim to be real, but deliver the goods in astonishingly inconsistent ways. From the way Hollywood constantly tries to give its product some sort of greater value with claims of authenticity, it would seem that the distrust of fiction so strongly urged by Plato thousands of years ago remains firmly in place (Halliwell 50). A significant portion of the voluminous satire that permeates every page of Gulliver's Travels is directed towards this profound suspicion of the value of fiction and the often ridiculous extremes to which creative artists go to create value in their 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 Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Distrust of narrative is always greatest when the means of conveying it is new and unknown. This was the case with the novel around the time Jonathan Swift was composing Gulliver's Travels. When this new medium of presenting fiction comes at a time when scientific exploration was beginning to replace older notions of religion, superstition, and myth, asserting empirical verisimilitude within fiction takes on even greater importance. "The transfer of details to overt fictions can create verisimilitude, since it appropriates to fiction a strategy of recording reality, the world of brute and unignorable facts. But the impetus for this involves ways of thinking and experiencing rather than a rhetoric calculated to convince doubters. Novelists repeatedly assured readers that the substance of their story was real and historical and that their telling was faithful: an account of current events" (Hunter 200). Nowhere, perhaps, does Swift address this painful need. of the authors of early British novels in the reader's mind a curious recognition of quantifiable authenticity compared to when Gulliver first gave an extremely detailed account of what it was like to eat, sleep and go to the toilet among the giants of Brobdingnag. only to then explain why he spent so much time explaining a situation that the reader hardly needs to know. “I hope the kind Reader will excuse me for having dwelt on these and similar Particulars; which, however insignificant they may appear to vulgar and humiliated minds, will yet surely aid a philosopher to enlarge his thoughts and imagination, and to apply them to the benefit of public as well as private life; which was my sole object in presenting this and other accounts of my travels to the world;* in which I have been chiefly a student of truth, without affecting any ornament of learning or style” (Swift 82). What kind of philosopher might be able to expand his thinking and imagination to the point where he can use the information thatGulliver has provided on any of the issues he describes so precisely it can only be imagined, but Gulliver provides a clue in the form of a satirical barb aimed with great precision when he admits to having corrected “several passages of minor moment which were in my first copy, for fear of being censured as dull and trivial, of which travelers are often, perhaps not without justice, accused" (Swift 82). The "travellers" whom Swift targets for being too indulgent in details intended to give greater sense of verisimilitude and a voice of authority are not the Irish Gypsies who sold their wares, but travel adventure writers who were an enormously popular antecedent of the novel and essential in its early evolution "Early novelists openly sought to capitalize on the contemporary popularity of travel books suggesting the similarity of their wares" (Hunter 353) and one of the most successful was Daniel Defoe, Aphra Behn and other early English novelists all managed to incorporate a bit of travel adventure into many of their stories and adopting techniques to establish authenticity is vital. part of those prototypes of the modern novel such as the preface. Perhaps Jonathan Swift was as puzzled by the need for a work of fiction that needed introductory material as much 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 typically associated with nonfiction material. Eighteenth-century English novels almost invariably contained a preface, and usually for the purpose of creating that false sense of authenticity. The introductory material of 18th century novels was "Based on a true story" of film and TV. The fact that the preface is associated with nonfiction and used to wide effect in these novels is neither coincidental nor accidental. Their purpose is to establish in the reader the idea that he is about to read something real and realistic, if not factual. Such is the inherent absurdity of the preface of many novels in establishing such veracity that Swift provides a satirical perspective on them in the form of not, not two, but three different pieces of introductory material existing only for the purpose of creating a foundation of reality . for the story that finally begins about a dozen pages later. The advertisement, Captain Gulliver's letter to his cousin Sympson, and the publisher's direct address to the reader would all, in a work of nonfiction, have helped set the stage. the credibility of the story they are about to read. In the hands of English novelists who adopted the preface for their works of fiction, the material accomplishes much the same thing. In Jonathan Swift's hands, however, the cutting edge of biting satire that is the intent of the introductory material reaches lethal weapon status with the appearance that the publisher himself is taking the time to publicly assure readers that " there is an air of truth evident in the whole; and indeed the author was so distinguished by his truthfulness,* that it became a sort of proverb among his neighbors in Redriff, when any one stated a thing, that is, it was as true as if Mr. Gulliver had said it" (Sympson xxxvii). That Defoe can once again be considered a primary target of Swift's satire seems easy enough to demonstrate in view of the very similar statement by the supposed publisher of Robinson Crusoe that it is no more and no less than a story of fact. the accumulation of facts as evidence in support of an authentic truth is both what exists in 18th-century novels and what is at the heart of much of the satire of Gulliver's Travels. Or, how, 1998.