Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and the Satire of Colonial Capitalism Essay by Top Papers

The Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift, perhaps best known for his classic novel Gulliver's Travels, also attained infamous renown in his own lifetime for a work of satire so brilliantly crafted that many of his own contemporaries believed it to be a serious proposal, and Swift to be a genocidal madman.This research paper will explore the social and economic background behind the drafting of Swift's satire "A Modest Proposal." The paper will argue the thesis that Swift's work targets not only Anglo-Irish absentee landlords but also the British colonial state which had been attempting to increase tax revenues in the already over-taxed Ireland to fund imperial adventures in other fields (Moore 681). As will be seen, Swift's description of the poverty and deprivation in Ireland in the early 18th century was deeply rooted in the reality of colonial capitalism.