Many have said that A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift (1729) is the best satirical essay ever written. In it, he suggests that the problem of poverty among the Irish (which Swift, incidentally, blamed on British policies) would be solved if Irish babies were treated as food and fed to the wealthy. Many of Swift's contemporaries who read the essay were horrified, missing the irony. Swift's real message was that the upper classes ought to change their deplorable callousness toward the poor.
Swift's A Tale of a Tub (1704) is a religious allegory featuring three brothers who represent the Anglican, Roman Catholic, and dissenting Christians (who believe in a personal, noninstitutional form of Christianity). Swift uses his satire and fiction writing abilities to make his point that Anglicism is the happy medium between the egotistic individualism.....
This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 408 words. This
study guide contains 34,506 words (approx. 115 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Literature Guide with our Gulliver's Travels Access Pass.
