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Synopsis |
Swift's essay is widely held to be one of the greatest examples of sustained irony in the history of the English language. Much of its shock value derives from the fact that the first portion of the essay describes the plight of starving beggars in Ireland, so that the reader is unprepared for the surprise of Swift's s... |
Swift goes to great lengths to support his argument, including a list of possible preparation styles for the children, and calculations showing the financial benefits of his suggestion. He uses methods of argument throughout his essay which lampoon the then-influential William Petty and the social engineering popular a... |
In the tradition of Roman satire, Swift introduces the reforms he is actually suggesting by paralipsis: |
Population solutions |
George Wittkowsky argued that Swift's main target in A Modest Proposal was not the conditions in Ireland, but rather the can-do spirit of the times that led people to devise a number of illogical schemes that would purportedly solve social and economic ills. Swift was especially attacking projects that tried to fix pop... |
A Modest Proposal also targets the calculating way people perceived the poor in designing their projects. The pamphlet targets reformers who "regard people as commodities". In the piece, Swift adopts the "technique of a political arithmetician" to show the utter ridiculousness of trying to prove any proposal with dispa... |
Critics differ about Swift's intentions in using this faux-mathematical philosophy. Edmund Wilson argues that statistically "the logic of the 'Modest proposal' can be compared with defence of crime (arrogated to Marx) in which he argues that crime takes care of the superfluous population". Wittkowsky counters that Swif... |
Rhetoric |
Author Charles K. Smith argues that Swift's rhetorical style persuades the reader to detest the speaker and pity the Irish. Swift's specific strategy is twofold, using a "trap" to create sympathy for the Irish and a dislike of the narrator who, in the span of one sentence, "details vividly and with rhetorical emphasis ... |
Swift has his proposer further degrade the Irish by using language ordinarily reserved for animals. Lewis argues that the speaker uses "the vocabulary of animal husbandry" to describe the Irish. Once the children have been commodified, Swift's rhetoric can easily turn "people into animals, then meat, and from meat, log... |
Swift uses the proposer's serious tone to highlight the absurdity of his proposal. In making his argument, the speaker uses the conventional, textbook-approved order of argument from Swift's time (which was derived from the Latin rhetorician Quintilian). The contrast between the "careful control against the almost inco... |
Influences |
Scholars have speculated about which earlier works Swift may have had in mind when he wrote A Modest Proposal. |
Tertullian's Apology |
James William Johnson argues that A Modest Proposal was largely influenced and inspired by Tertullian's Apology: a satirical attack against early Roman persecution of Christianity. Johnson believes that Swift saw major similarities between the two situations. Johnson notes Swift's obvious affinity for Tertullian and th... |
Defoe's The Generous Projector |
It has also been argued that A Modest Proposal was, at least in part, a response to the 1728 essay The Generous Projector or, A Friendly Proposal to Prevent Murder and Other Enormous Abuses, By Erecting an Hospital for Foundlings and Bastard Children by Swift's rival Daniel Defoe. |
Mandeville's Modest Defence of Publick Stews |
Bernard Mandeville's Modest Defence of Publick Stews asked to introduce public and state controlled bordellos. The 1726 paper acknowledges women's interests andwhile not being a completely satirical texthas also been discussed as an inspiration for Jonathan Swift's title. Mandeville had by 1705 already become famous fo... |
John Locke's First Treatise of Government |
John Locke commented: "Be it then as Sir Robert says, that Anciently, it was usual for Men to sell and Castrate their Children. Let it be, that they exposed them; Add to it, if you please, for this is still greater Power, that they begat them for their Tables to fat and eat them: If this proves a right to do so, we may... |
Economic themes |
Robert Phiddian's article "Have you eaten yet? The Reader in A Modest Proposal" focuses on two aspects of A Modest Proposal: the voice of Swift and the voice of the Proposer. Phiddian stresses that a reader of the pamphlet must learn to distinguish between the satirical voice of Jonathan Swift and the apparent economic... |
While Swift's proposal is obviously not a serious economic proposal, George Wittkowsky, author of "Swift's Modest Proposal: The Biography of an Early Georgian Pamphlet", argues that to understand the piece fully it is important to understand the economics of Swift's time. Wittowsky argues that not enough critics have t... |
"People are the riches of a nation" |
At the start of a new industrial age in the 18th century, it was believed that "people are the riches of the nation", and there was a general faith in an economy that paid its workers low wages because high wages meant workers would work less. Furthermore, "in the mercantilist view no child was too young to go into ind... |
Louis A. Landa composed a conducive analysis when he noted that it would have been healthier for the Irish economy to more appropriately utilize their human assets by giving the people an opportunity to "become a source of wealth to the nation" or else they "must turn to begging and thievery". This opportunity may have... |
Landa presents Swift's A Modest Proposal as a critique of the popular and unjustified maxim of mercantilism in the 18th century that "people are the riches of a nation". Swift presents the dire state of Ireland and shows that mere population itself, in Ireland's case, did not always mean greater wealth and economy. The... |
The public's reaction |
Swift's essay created a backlash within the community after its publication. The work was aimed at the aristocracy, and they responded in turn. Several members of society wrote to Swift regarding the work. Lord Bathurst's letter intimated that he certainly understood the message, and interpreted it as a work of comedy: |
12 February 1729–30: |
Modern usage |
A Modest Proposal is included in many literature courses as an example of early modern western satire. It also serves as an introduction to the concept and use of argumentative language, lending itself to secondary and post-secondary essay courses. Outside of the realm of English studies, A Modest Proposal is included ... |
The essay's approach has been copied many times. In his book A Modest Proposal (1984), the evangelical author Francis Schaeffer emulated Swift's work in a social conservative polemic against abortion and euthanasia, imagining a future dystopia that advocates recycling of aborted embryos, fetuses, and some disabled infa... |
In his book A Modest Proposal for America (2013), statistician Howard Friedman opens with a satirical reflection of the extreme drive to fiscal stability by ultra-conservatives. |
In the 1998 edition of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood there is a quote from A Modest Proposal before the introduction. |
A Modest Video Game Proposal is the title of an open letter sent by activist/former attorney Jack Thompson on 10 October 2005. He proposed that someone should "create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game" that would allow players to act out a scenario in which the game character kills video game developers. |
Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist includes a letter in which he uses Swift's approach in connection with the Vietnam War. Thompson writes a letter to a local Aspen newspaper informing them that, on Christmas Eve, he is going to use napalm to burn a number of d... |
The 2013 horror film Butcher Boys, written by the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre scribe Kim Henkel, is said to be an updating of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. Henkel imagined the descendants of folks who actually took Swift up on his proposal. The film opens with a quote from J. Swift. |
On 30 November 2017, Jonathan Swift's 350th birthday, The Washington Post published a column entitled "Why Alabamians should consider eating Democrats' babies", by Alexandra Petri. |
In July 2019, E. Jean Carroll published a book titled What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal, discussing problematic behaviour of male humans. |
On 3 October 2019, a satirist spoke up at an event for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, claiming that a solution to the climate crisis was "we need to eat the babies". The individual also wore a T-shirt saying "Save The Planet, Eat The Children". This stunt was understood by many as a modern application of A Modest Proposal. |
On 16 January 2022, San Francisco Chronicle published an editorial by Joe Matthews titled "Opinion: Want true equity? I propose, modestly, forcing California parents to swap children" in which the author makes "a modest proposal" recommending that rich people give their children to poor people and poor people give thei... |
Notes |
References |
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External links |
A Modest Proposal (CELT) |
A Modest Proposal (Gutenberg) |
A Modest Proposal – Annotated text aligned to Common Core Standards |
A Modest Proposal BBC Radio 4 In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg |
'A modest proposal For preventing the children of poor people From being a Burthen to their Parents or the Country, And for making them Beneficial to the publick. The Third Edition, Dublin, Printed: And Reprinted at London, for Weaver Bickerton, in Devereux-Court near the Middle-Temple, 1730. |
Proposal to eat the children a short movie based upon Swift's novel. |
Essays by Jonathan Swift |
Satirical essays |
Pamphlets |
18th-century essays |
Works published anonymously |
British satire |
1729 in Great Britain |
Cannibalism in fiction |
Subsets and Splits
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