Jonathan Swift
1667-1745
Biography
• Born in Dublin on November 30, 1667
• Always a kind of displaced person – an
Englishman by blood living among Irishmen, an
Anglican by choice surrounded by Roman
Catholics or, in his own diocese, Presbyterians
• Had an ominous start to life when he was
snatched from his cradle by a loving but
misguided nurse. He remained separated from
his mother for three years
• Studied at Trinity University, Dublin’s great
Protestant university
• He worked as the Tory party’s chief
propagandist
• Installed as Dean of St. Patrick’s
Cathedral in 1713
• 1720- Began to engage himself more vigorously in Irish
causes, as a reluctant Irish patriot. As he wrote to
Alexander Pope: “What I do is owing to perfect rage and
resentment, and the mortifying sight of slavery, folly, and
baseness about me, among which I am forced to live.”
• His task was an exasperating one of rousing a people to
look after its own interests
• The causes he took up and shouldered throughout the
remainder of his productive life were mainly: 1) the
improvement of Irish agriculture and manufacture and
the encouragement of home consumption, 2) the
protection of the currency against the threats of
devaluation from English coinages, 3) the protection of
the rights of the clergy, and 4) the care of the poor.
Works
• Most famous – and best – of his
nationalistic essays:
1) The Drapier’s Letters (1724-25);
2) A Modest Proposal (1729)
The condition of Ireland must have been a
primary inspiration for his monumental
satire on intellectual, moral, and spiritual
subservience, Gulliver’s Travels.
A Modest Proposal
A Modest Proposal
A Modest Proposal
• The author assumes the persona of a
political economic planner whose attitudes
reflect the very evils he proposes to
remedy by his “project.”
• The full title is: Preventing the Children of
Poor People in Ireland from Being a
Burthen [sic] to Their Parents, or the
Country, and for Making them Beneficial to
the Publick.
Swift’s Satire
• Swift is a Juvenalian satirist.
• Juvenal is a Roman satirist who wrote at
end of the first century AD.
• Juvenal and Swift are misanthropic
satirists who feel that evil is rooted in
man’s nature and the structure of society.
• The misanthropic satirist finds life not
comic but contemptible.
A Modest Proposal
• Not a single sentence deviates from the
essay’s bitter tone
• Its persuasive power lies in its irrefutable
indictment of Irish and English indifference
and sheer folly in the face of unspeakable
injustice and misery
• Its immediate attraction is its wildly original
and creative idea
Ironic Persona
• Swift employs a narrator whose views are
obviously antithetical to his own.
• Swift’s intended audience: 1)primarily the
Protestant Ascendancy of which he is a member;
2) the English legislators, landlords, and, 3)
economic apologists; 4) the Irish commoners
who, if we view Swift as an angry preacher, are
being scolded for their sloth, stupidity, and
wanton behavior
Historical Parallel
• An actual plan to solve Ireland’s problems was
suggested by Irish patriot, Colonel Edward Despard.
• Despard suggested that he could solve the country’s
problems through a separation of the sexes.
• Swift satirically proposed that the Irish institute a system
of regulated cannibalism.
• Despard very seriously proposed racial suicide, which,
had it been instituted, would have eliminated the entire
Irish population in a few short generations.
• In Colonel Despard’s suggestion, what had been ironic in
Swift became theoretical truth, for it was seriously
proposed.