A Modest Proposal
Have You Eaten Yet?: Swift's Final Solution
As a lately favored eighteenth century essay, Jonathan Swift's "Proposal" has been canonized as a satirical model of wit. As will be discussed shortly, Swift's essay is often seen as an allegory for England's oppression of Ireland. Swift, himself and Irishman (Tucker 142), would seem to have pointed his razor wit against the foreign nation responsible for his city's ruin. Wearing the lens of a New Historicist, however, requires that we reexamine the power structures at work in Swift's society. We must delve into not only Swift's "Proposal," but also into other of his correspondence, and even into discourse of the epoch in order to gain a thick description of the many levels of understanding present in Swift's "Proposal."
As a model of rhetorical discourse, Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Public" is unique among the plethora of pamphlets which circulated Ireland in the early eighteenth century. However, it is imprudent to think of the work as having emerged purely isolated from the pressures of the society in which Swift wrote. While propositions such as "A Modest Proposal for the More Certain and yet More Easie Provision for the Poor, and Likewise for the Better Suppression of Theives Tending Much to the Advancement of Trade, Especially in the most Profitable Part of It," (Author Unknown, Cited in Rawson 189) were commonly circulated in order to postulate solutions to the crises of the day, Jonathan Swift's "Proposal" has been read as a parody of this sort of pamphlet (Rawson 189). There can be no solid support for such a thesis, and it would be wrong to infer that what is at work in Swift's "Proposal" in any important sense is a burlesque on project concerning the poor or on the titles of certain
As a lately favored eighteenth century essay, Jonathan Swift's "Proposal" has been canonized as a satirical model of wit. As will be discussed shortly, Swift's essay is often seen as an allegory for England's oppression of Ireland. Swift, himself and Irishman (Tucker 142), would seem to have pointed his razor wit against the foreign nation responsible for his city's ruin. Wearing the lens of a New Historicist, however, requires that we reexamine the power structures at work in Swift's society. We must delve into not only Swift's "Proposal," but also into other of his correspondence, and even into discourse of the epoch in order to gain a thick description of the many levels of understanding present in Swift's "Proposal."
As a model of rhetorical discourse, Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Public" is unique among the plethora of pamphlets which circulated Ireland in the early eighteenth century. However, it is imprudent to think of the work as having emerged purely isolated from the pressures of the society in which Swift wrote. While propositions such as "A Modest Proposal for the More Certain and yet More Easie Provision for the Poor, and Likewise for the Better Suppression of Theives Tending Much to the Advancement of Trade, Especially in the most Profitable Part of It," (Author Unknown, Cited in Rawson 189) were commonly circulated in order to postulate solutions to the crises of the day, Jonathan Swift's "Proposal" has been read as a parody of this sort of pamphlet (Rawson 189). There can be no solid support for such a thesis, and it would be wrong to infer that what is at work in Swift's "Proposal" in any important sense is a burlesque on project concerning the poor or on the titles of certain