A Modest Proposal Essay -- essays research papers

Have You Eaten Yet? western fence lizards Final Solution&9As a belatedly favored eighteenth century essay, Jonathan brisks "Proposal" has been decl be as a satirical modelling of wit. As will be discussed shortly, Swifts essay is often seen as an allegory for Englands oppression of Ireland. Swift, himself and Irishman (Tucker 142), would seem to have pointed his razor wit against the foreign estate responsible for his citys ruin. Wearing the lens of a red-hot Historicist, however, requires that we re canvass the power structures at work in Swifts guild. We must delve into non only Swifts "Proposal," but also into other of his correspondence, and even into discourse of the epoch in enunciate to gain a thick description of the many levels of understanding vex in Swifts "Proposal." &9As a model of rhetorical discourse, Jonathan Swifts "A small-scale Proposal for Preventing the Children of brusque People in Ireland from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for fashioning 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 downhearted Proposal for the More Certain and yet More Easie Provision for the Poor, and likewise for the Better Suppression of TheivesTending Much to the Advancement of Trade, Especially in the most Profitable Part of It," (Author Unknown, Cited in Rawson 189) were commonly circulated in orderliness to postulate solutions to the crises of the day, Jonathan Swifts "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 estimate that what is at work in Swifts "Proposal" in any important sense is a burlesque on jump concerning th e poor or on the titles of certain types of economic tracts. The mimicry of these things which Swift employs is but seasoning, and not the main point. Likewise, to suggest that Swift was radically assail the notion of economic planning of human affairs, or even that his stance on certain central questions was humane or liberal is misleading. The legal age of interp... ...ocaust becomes a close analogue to the "proposal," since the problem, whose formulation and very existence great power elsewhere seem preposterous, underwent a Final Solution with hideous efficiency. This likeness reinforces the point that the "proposal" is not a sheer fantasy, nor a sardonically frivolous gesture of despair. With a New Historic lens, we must examine the interplay of interpretations of the history we have been taught. As Tyson puts it, "had the Nazis won World War II, we would all be reading a very different account of the war." (Tyson 282) We cannot be satisfied with any interpretation of history which relies on subjective information. &9It is not surprising that the targets of Swifts satire cannot be, and are not meant to be, clearly distinguished from one another, nor that Swifts allegiances between the English, the Anglo-Irish, and the natives are blurred and fluctuating things. These confusions provide essential energies of Swifts style. The "Modest Proposal" clearly is an embodiment of the complexities and contradictions of the English-Irish relationship in the eighteenth century.