A Modest Proposal Rhetorical Analysis
Cuibuș Amalia Dania
Ro-En
Anul I
Satire in Jonathan Swift`s writing
Jonathan Swift is an Irish writer from the 18th century and was known as a satirist, essayist and a political pamphleteer. He is the author of Gulliver`s Travels, A Journal to Stella, Drapier`s Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, A Tale of a Tub and A Modest Proposal. His last work, A Modest Proposal is an occasional essay in which he gives a response to an economical problem which shatters and weakens Ireland at that time, but his response is satiric and he gives irrational solutions. According to the Classic Encyclopaedia, based on the 11th Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannia, Jonathan Swift is ‘a satirist struggling …show more content…
Swift uses irony to mock some of Irish habits and some common belief which were very popular at that time, a person who has authority over every one who lives in his territory. He speaks about landlords, he says that ‘...landlords, who as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children’ to help him sustain his theory. He mocks that the landlord is the highest authority and everyone must obey him. If the landlord would approve his theory, that would mean that all of the children from under his territory would be sold to him, whether the parents approve of it or …show more content…
At a first reading of the title, ‘A Modest Proposal’ which has a small introduction, by which the author explains the reason of his pamphlet, ‘For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public’ Swift may lead the reader into thinking that his proposal is fairly practical and useful; a reader may have expected an economical plan with may numbers and logical facts. It`s ironic, but in a way, he did offer the reader numbers ‘The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born.’ and this gives the text authenticity, but his ideas are, nevertheless, immoral and
Ro-En
Anul I
Satire in Jonathan Swift`s writing
Jonathan Swift is an Irish writer from the 18th century and was known as a satirist, essayist and a political pamphleteer. He is the author of Gulliver`s Travels, A Journal to Stella, Drapier`s Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, A Tale of a Tub and A Modest Proposal. His last work, A Modest Proposal is an occasional essay in which he gives a response to an economical problem which shatters and weakens Ireland at that time, but his response is satiric and he gives irrational solutions. According to the Classic Encyclopaedia, based on the 11th Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannia, Jonathan Swift is ‘a satirist struggling …show more content…
Swift uses irony to mock some of Irish habits and some common belief which were very popular at that time, a person who has authority over every one who lives in his territory. He speaks about landlords, he says that ‘...landlords, who as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children’ to help him sustain his theory. He mocks that the landlord is the highest authority and everyone must obey him. If the landlord would approve his theory, that would mean that all of the children from under his territory would be sold to him, whether the parents approve of it or …show more content…
At a first reading of the title, ‘A Modest Proposal’ which has a small introduction, by which the author explains the reason of his pamphlet, ‘For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public’ Swift may lead the reader into thinking that his proposal is fairly practical and useful; a reader may have expected an economical plan with may numbers and logical facts. It`s ironic, but in a way, he did offer the reader numbers ‘The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born.’ and this gives the text authenticity, but his ideas are, nevertheless, immoral and