Todd goes on to show that the power

Todd goes on to show that the power of the imagination reappears in the satire of the time constantly as a danger by encouraging an “enthusiasm” in which bodily excitement overwhelms reason and judgment. Swift’s Gulliver, for example, travels from one monstrous vision to the next, constantly being excited by the image but failing to profit by understanding it (150). Precisely this emotional but irrational “enthusiastic” response is what critics of the time feared that fictional narrative would encourage.