SOURCE: Beaumont, Charles Allen. “Swift's Classical Rhetoric in A Modest Proposal.” Georgia Review 14, no. 3 (fall 1960): 307-17.

In the following essay, Beaumont comments on the employment of rhetoric and its significance in A Modest Proposal.

Jonathan Swift had little confidence in man's using his reasoning powers; therefore it is not surprising that he turned to the persuasive power of classical rhetoric to convince man of his sins and follies and to indicate right action. Having been thoroughly trained in classical rhetoric at Kilkenny School and Trinity College, Dublin, Swift made extensive use of the non-argumentative devices of ancient rhetoric in both his ironical and his non-ironical work. His non-ironical rhetoric, such as his sermons, he called “plain honest stuff”; his highly ironical work can be referred to (as he did to an early pamphlet of his) as “grave formal lies.” One such grave formal lie is A Modest Proposal...