Responding to the public outcry for a remedy, Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal” as a satire-a literary work that ridicules a subject through the use of irony and wit and is intended to create amusement, contempt, or anger in the reader. Thousands of men, women, and children suffered homelessness and poverty as the result of crop failures, high unemployment, rising prices, and trade restrictions imposed by the British government.
Conditions in Ireland reached a crisis point in 1729. Patrick’s Cathedral in Ireland, Jonathan Swift saw firsthand the devastating consequences of famine on the poorer segments of the Irish population. Responding to the desperate state of Ireland’s poor, “A Modest Proposal” offers an absurd solution: Breed the children of the poor for profit and eat them.Įvents in History at the Time of the EssayĪs dean of St. An essay written and published in 1729 in Ireland.
0 kommentar(er)
