New Historical Criticism of Swift's Modest Proposal

Have You Eaten Yet?: Swift’s Final Solution As a lately favored eighteenth century essay, Jonathan Swift’s “Proposal” has been canonized as a satirical model of wit. As will be discussed shortly, Swift’s essay is often seen as an allegory for England’s oppression of Ireland. Swift, himself and Irishman (Tucker 142), would seem to have pointed his razor wit against the foreign nation responsible for his city’s ruin. Wearing the lens of …

…relies on subjective information. It is not surprising that the targets of Swift’s satire cannot be, and are not meant to be, clearly distinguished from one another, nor that Swift’s allegiances between the English, the Anglo-Irish, and the natives are blurred and fluctuating things. These confusions provide essential energies of Swift’s style. The “Modest Proposal” clearly is an embodiment of the complexities and contradictions of the English-Irish relationship in the eighteenth century.