Rationale Behind "A Modest Proposal"

Paper Summary:

The paper argues that in "A Modest Proposal", Jonathan Swift shocks his readers using satire, statistics and imagery in order to draw attention to the deteriorated status of lower class Ireland. The paper refutes the contention that Swift's intentions were to exploit the lower class through comic means.

From the Paper:

"After introducing the reader to a country where starvation is widespread and lower class families are destitute, Swift proceeds to offer a fanciful and seemingly ridiculous solution to the poverty issue in Ireland. The Proposal is full of folly, but at such a level of lunacy, that one proceeds to read in order to better understand why the author would make such a profound suggestion. In Edward Bloom's opinion, he says, "God, Gulliver, and Genocide may not be the broad study of "barbarism and the European imagination" promised in the subtitle. But it is a remarkably subtle and generously contextualized study of barbarism and Swift's imagination" (Bloom). Bloom was trying to point out that although the onset of both of Swift's famous stories seem to be honest respectable titles, Swift does a good job of creating a satire in which people can relate the ridiculousness of the story to how unreasonable it was for the Irish lower class to maintain their poverty in the midst of a wealthy upper-class and ruling class."

Sample of Sources Used:

• "Ending The Vicious circle." The Nation (Thailand) 17 oct 2007 <http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/search/homesubmitForm.do>.
• Bengels, Barbara. "Swift's A Modest Proposal ." Explicator, vol 65. Iss 1. 2006 13-15. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=116&sid=320bfd89-8fa0-4959-8360-91e2985ad0f2%40sessionmgr109>.
• Bloom, Edward. "The Satiric Mode of Feeling: A Theory of Intention." 1969 115-116. <pao.chadwyck.co.uk>.
• Briggs, Peter. " John Graunt, Sir William Petty, and Swift's Modest Proposal." Eighteenth-Century Life, vol 29. Issue 2. 2005 3-24.
• Dargan , H.M. "The Nature of Allegory as Used by Swift." Studies in Philologym, vol. 1, 1916 P.13.

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