A Modest Proposal and Other Satires by jonathan swift

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

A Modest Proposal is great. The "Other Satirical Works" are not. Part of the difficulty I have with some of the other satirical essays is that many of the references to the culture of that time are lost on me, so that undermines the satirical bite significantly. Even taking that into account, most of the essays are underwhelming in terms of implementation, as several of them have an intriguing concept behind them but are simply not well executed. On the other hand, A Modest Proposal stands as a classic example of well-articulated work of satire. Amazingly, it has not lost its edge even after hundreds of years and after the geopolitical situation has massively changed. I would highly recommend giving A Modest Proposal a read for those who have not, but feel free to pass over most of the rest of this collection.

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Tunicam

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

This collection of Jonathan Swift's satirical works is very witty, very clever and very well-written. You do need a reasonably good knowledge of the times in which he wrote to appreciate much of it but I enjoyed it a great deal and I'm very far from being a historian.

When this is funny, which is a lot, it is very funny indeed. It's also thought-provoking; particularly when he addresses issues which still haven't been resolved to this day. I can't quite bring myself to give it the full five stars, however, because there are passages contained herein which are quite tedious and a bit of a slog to get through. They're very much the exception rather than the rule, though, and this is a great read overall.

I can only imagine what an outcry 'A Modest Proposal' must have caused when originally published. The people I've spoken to about it who didn't know the basic premise have found it quite shocking even today.

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X0XjulietX0X

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

"A Modest Proposal" is so fucking ridiculously contemporary that I can't help but be the one to say it for the millionth time. If you think things have gotten too raw and uncivilized in today's age, and that people were more well mannered in the olden days, you are....full O' SHITE!

I'm sure no one reading this actually does think this way but still...I love being able to add this bit of actual, factual info and not feeling the least bit bad about it because history is genteel only to the people who see the past through rose-colored glasses which are dipped in (bull) shit...

I also like that Swift was a great hater of everything...also, unless I'm mistaken, a royalist conservative and a pretty trenchant religious one at that....and yet, and yet, as Yeats was wont to say: "world besotted traveler he/ served the cause of human liberty"

So SNL, the Daily Show, Carlin, Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce et al were 200 years in the making (and that's just talkin' Swift here, mind you)...

Also I remember reading that prominent literary critic of his once remarked that the narrator this book has what he brilliantly refers to as "a nervous hiccup"- he's not being outwardly snotty, there's no punk rock-ishness intended. You can hear it if you listen, its in the last sentence. The narrator's more like an acquiescent bureaucrat sincerely attempting to remedy the situation at hand for the colonial overlords...who happen to be enslaving his own people with exorbitant rents and property rights which leave much to be desired....which is pretty much where I think a satirist is these days.

If you look at the characters or personae your average comedian or satirical talk show host (ahem, Stewart and Colbert, especially, which gives it a different spin entirely) has, its all about being a sort of befuddled, confused, average guy who is trying to make these lumbering, incoherent systems and bizarre situations run smoothly. The technocrats are mad. The comedian is a member of the lower order, too smart and too normal to be from the avant- outside, anxiously clearing his throat and calling the masters of the universe into question using irony, paradox, scatology, and an almost childlike sense of absurdity to show how wrong and possibly evil the powers that be are, how they show themselves to be almost without fail.

It's not that they stand outside the system- it's that they are a part of the madness and therefore have a front row seat to the insanity in high places. Butchering of language (that precious gift), the unnecessary deaths of innocents, baldfaced lies, cynicism to assume that such things are or should be the due matter of course, sinister opportunities resulting in collateral damage and mind-boggling failure and outrageous profits for shady people who everyone already pretty much knows to be shady, deep down, because they are a part of it too.

So, therefore, all the proposals are modest. Immodesty wouldn't notice itself without the contrast. Swift lives!

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DaiMiyamoto

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

Gulliver’in Gezileri dışında bir kitabını bilmediğim Jonathan Swift’in sıkı bir hiciv ustası olduğunu öğrendiğim denemeler topluluğu.

Yazar, önsözde bilgi olmadan nükte ve zekâ, salt kremadan ibaret derken aslında bir nevi dakika bir gol bir durumu oluşuyor. Zira, yazarımız kapasitesi olmayıp atıp tutanlar kadar zeki ama vasıfsız insanlardan da bayağı mustarip.

Ciddi bir eleştirim olacak, Latince veya Eski Yunanca başta olmak üzere yabancı dil çevirilerinde muhteşem notlarıyla ufkumu açan İş Bankası Kültür Yayınlarının bu kitabında birçok yerde Latince sözlerin çevirileri ve açıklamaları yoktu. Normalde, hiç sorun değil derdim ama o kadar yerinde açıklamalarla bütünü algılamaya yardımcı oluyorlardı bu açıklamalar ki eksik kaldım desem yalan olmaz.

“Hırs, çoğu zaman insanlara en alçak işleri yaptırır.” sözünün altını güzelce dolduruyor Swift. “Kötü arkadaşlık köpeğe benzer; en çok, en sevdiklerini kirletir.” sözünde ise gayriihtiyari aklım Ezel’deki “Oysa herkes öldürür sevdiğini” sözü geldi aklıma Ramiz Dayı’nın. Menfaat, çoğu zaman sinsi bir yol gösterici oluyor tüm insanlığa ne yazık ki.

Kitabın adını aldığı son deneme ise gerçekten tüyler ürpertici ve bir o kadar da düşündürücü. Kitabın kapağını kapatırken yüzümde mutlu bir ifade vardı, teşekkürler Swift bana ayırdığın zaman için.

“Gerçek anlamda çok az insan gerçekten bugünü yaşar, çoğunluğu bir başka zaman yaşamaya başlayabilmek adına bekler ve biriktirir.”
“İmdi, etkili ve dolambaçlı konuşma sanatı ruhun ihsan ettiği sözcükleri, cemaati en fazla etkileyecek kadansta sesletebilmeye bağlıdır.”
“Övgü, mevcut iktidarın kızıdır.”
“…çünkü bugünlerde güneşin yalnızca yükselişine bakıyor, batışına değil…”

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PyroGreek

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

'A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick' was published anonymously in 1729. These were bad years in Ireland three failed harvests were followed by poverty and disease. 'A modest proposal... ' lays bare the politics and prejudice of the time. The structure of the pamphlet imitates the pamphlets being published which offered up serious proposals to the crisis.

The shocking suggestion is that the poor Irish should sell their children to the rich like cattle in order to gain financially. "A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout." He discusses the benefits of such commerce to butchers, for the making of gloves for ladies and boots for men. He also suggests that there will be no more domestic violence as women will be valued for child bearing. There were rumours that people indulged in cannibalism but those rumours existed in Edmund Spensers day.

At the time William Petty was surveyor in Ireland and worked for Cromwell, he mapped and measured creditors, what was taken and given to soldiers and the cronies of Cromwell. These statistics were part of a belief in a mathematical solution. The Irish economy was extractive and produce was taken and sold in England.

Swift was Dean of St. Patrick's cathedral a position partly of exile and due to failure in his career. In this work he is emulating his sermons, satirising people who think they can reform and holding forth that people will ever change. He contributed to public arguments about how Ireland was ruled. In the 1720's he objected anonymously via the 'Drapiers letters' to the underhanded winning of a contract to recoin the currency without the consultation of the Anglo Irish community. He became a hero for this intervention. Although Swift denunciates he doesn't necessarily sympathise with the people. I enjoyed this and I encourage visitors to Dublin to visit St Patrick's cathedral.

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SolsticeMelody

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

At around three and a half thousand words, this is an extremely short text, which will take probably less than thirty minutes to read.

It is a political satire which is either very funny or outrageously distasteful, as three hundred years of readers have variously argued. Modern readers should be aware that it includes themes of cannibalism (!).

What makes this an interesting read is that it purports to be a serious proposal to address a very serious contemporary problem revolving around the large numbers of beggars. Swift describes the scenes of destitute women trailing half a dozen children as they wander around begging for their living. And the problem persists because none of the politicians can agree on what measures to take to resolve matters.

Swift works through various considerations. He notes that the only work available for young begging children is stealing. But children are not generally skilled enough to do that until the age of 6, so there is a national crisis about what to do with children up to the age of 6.

Swift notes that these children cannot even be sold into slavery as that will scarcely recoup a quarter of the costs of rearing the child to that age. So, what is to be done?

In the absence of any other solutions, he concludes that there is only one way forward: eat the children. He works through various considerations of how that can work in practice.

This is a well-crafted satire which serves to bring into sharper relief, the underlying original problem of the impoverished children on the streets. Swift’s solution is so outrageous, that it forces readers to reflect on the fact that a different solution is needed.

Although the document is carefully crafted and well written for its readership of 1729, changing tastes (excuse the pun) mean that some passages of the text work less well with modern readers. Modern readers do not need the calculations in the text of how many hundreds of thousands of children are affected, nor indeed do modern readers need the references and citations to others who have contributed to the idea. Modern readers are far too used to half baked ill-conceived ideas being shouted out as political proposals.

Overall, this is a classic example of political satire and persuasion. It is a text which deserves to be known by anyone interested in the rhetoric of persuasion, even if parts of the text have weathered less well over the last few centuries.

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karannemesis

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

It has been over ten years since I read this. Over time, I have forgotten some specifics regarding the historical context connected to when Swift wrote this. I still very much enjoyed Swift's satire.

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SugaSuga

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

Sempre più convinto che se abbiamo Saunders è grazie a Vonnegut. E se Vonnegut è stato ciò che è stato, lo deve a Mark Twain (e Ambrose Bierce). Ma il nonno della satira moderna è sicuramente Jonathan Swift.

Avanguardistico, una Modesta Proposta, se scritto oggi, creerebbe lo stesso scalpore di trecento anni fa.

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A Modest Proposal and Other Satires

jonathan swift george r. levine

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