This document provides an overview of the lesson objectives and content for a course on the 18th century English literature work "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift. The objectives are to introduce Swift and the time period, encourage appreciation of the cultural context, and develop critical reading skills. A brief biography of Swift is given. The document then summarizes that "A Modest Proposal" was Swift's satirical response to England's mistreatment of Ireland, proposing a controversial solution to overpopulation and poverty. It aims to provoke readers into confronting issues of dehumanization.

1. English 243: Survey of English Literature I
Lesson: A Modest Proposal
Objectives:
· to introduce Eighteenth Century English Literature,
particularly Jonathan Swift.
· to stimulate enjoyment of literary works of the period.
· to encourage an appreciation of the works in relationship to
the cultures that produced them.
· to develop the ability to read literary texts for meaning,
structure, and style.
· to develop critical reading, writing, and thinking skills
through the analysis of literary works.
Jonathan Swift
Here is a overly brief overview of Swift’s life and works:
Jonathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667 in Dublin,
Ireland, the son of Protestant Anglo-Irish parents: his ancestors
had been Royalists, and all his life he would be a High-
Churchman. His father, also Jonathan, died a few months before
he was born, upon which his mother, Abigail, returned to
England, leaving her son behind, in the care of relatives. In
1673, at the age of six, Swift began his education at Kilkenny
Grammar School, which was, at the time, the best in Ireland.
Between 1682 and 1686 he attended, and graduated from,
Trinity College in Dublin, though he was not, apparently, an
exemplary student.
In 1688 William of Orange invaded England, initiating the
Glorious Revolution: with Dublin in political turmoil, Trinity
College was closed, and an ambitious Swift took the opportunity
to go to England, where he hoped to gain preferment in the

2. Anglican Church. In England, in 1689, he became secretary to
Sir William Temple, a diplomat and man of letters, at Moor
Park in Surrey.
Between 1696 and 1699 Swift composed most of his first great
work, A Tale of a Tub, a prose satire on the religious extremes
represented by Roman Catholicism and Calvinism, and in 1697
he wrote The Battle of the Books, a satire defending Temple's
conservative but beseiged position in the contemporary literary
controversy as to whether the works of the "Ancients" — the
great authors of classical antiquity — were to be preferred to
those of the "Moderns."
In 1701 Swift was awarded a D. D. from Dublin University, and
published his first political pamphlet, supporting the Whigs
against the Tories. 1704 saw the anonymous publication of A
Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books, and The Mechanical
Operation of the Spirit.
In 1720 he began work upon Gulliver's Travels, intended, as he
says in a letter to Pope, "to vex the world, not to divert it." In
1726 he visited England once again, and stayed with Pope at
Twickenham: in the same year Gulliver's Travels was published.
Swift's final trip to England took place in 1727. Between 1727
and 1736 publication of five volumes of Swift-Pope
Miscellanies. In 1729 A Modest Proposal was published.
Swift died on October 19, 1745.
A Modest Proposal
Swift's motives for writing A Modest Proposal, which appeared
in 1729, were complex. He felt, for his own part, that he had
been exiled to Ireland when he would have much preferred to
have been in England, and his personal sense of the wrongs he
had received at the hands of the English only intensified the
anger he felt at the way England mistreated Ireland.
He lived in an Ireland which was a colony, politically,
militarily, and economically dependent upon England. It was
manifestly in England's interest to keep things as they were: a

3. weak Ireland could not threaten England, and the measures
which kept it weak were profitable for the English. As a result
Ireland was a desperately poor country, overpopulated, full, as
Swift said, of beggars, wracked periodically by famine, heavily
taxed, and with no say at all in its own affairs. England
controlled the Irish legislature. English absentee landlords
owned most of the land which was worth owning. Irish
manufactories were deliberately crippled so that they could not
compete with those in England.
Swift was enraged at the passivity of the Irish people, who had
become so habituated to the situation that they seemed
incapable of making any effort to change it. The Irish
Parliament ignored numerous proposals which Swift made in
earnest — proposals to tax absentee landlords, to encourage
Irish industries, to improve the land, agricultural techniques,
and the quality of manufactured goods — which would have
begun to rectify things.
A Modest Proposal, then, is at once a disgusted parody of
Swift's own serious proposals, as well as those of less
disinterested "projectors," and a savage indictment both of the
exploitive English and of the exploited Irish. Rhetorically, it is
enormously sophisticated; requiring that we accept and reject its
central premise at one and the same time.
Behind the "Modest Proposer," that is, stands an enraged and
sardonic Swift, asking both sides whether the whole matter is
not merely a question of degree; a question of the extent to
which a human being — the manipulator or the manipulated —
can be dehumanized. Once the process of dehumanization gets
underway, as it obviously is, in a country in which no one —
not even the unfortunates themselves — seems to mind or object
to the fact that tens of thousands of human beings starve to
death each year, where can one calmly, sanely, and logically
draw the line and say thus far and no farther? A Modest
Proposal is a manifestation of Swift's sense of anger and

4. frustration, and as such it is merely the most savage, the most
brutal, the most heavily ironic, of the numerous tracts which he
produced during the early eighteenth century in an attempt to
shame England and to shock Ireland out of its lethargic state. It
is a ghastly masterpiece, cunningly devised, horribly plausible,
deviously manipulative: it remains for the reader to come to
terms with it, to comprehend it, and to determine the extent to
which, oddly enough, it might be relevant in our own world.
Just in case you missed it: A Modest Proposal is a satire. This
is not an actual proposal.
What is “satire”?
Satire is a genre that sets out to improve bad behavior through
sarcasm and irony. A satirist humorously depicts a current state
of affairs, and hopes that by doing so, he might improve it. It's
all about making fun of vices, foolishness, and shortcomings, so
that the subject can improve. Satire can be found in novels,
plays, short stories, and well, almost anywhere.
Satire has been used since the classical era and it is still used
today. Modern examples include The Colbert Report.
Please read A Modest Proposal.
· For a GoogleDocs printable version, click here.
· For access to other versions, including Kindle and HTML,
click here.
· For an “audio” version, including MP3 and Apple iTunes,
click here.
This lesson was created by Northern Virginia Community
College English faculty and is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
unless otherwise stated (see below). Distribution and
photocopies are allowed for educational purposes.

5. Attributions
Jonathan Swift’s biography is a partial copy of a biography
written by David Cody, Associate Professor of English,
Hartwick College, for VictorianWeb.org, a site that permits the
use of the text and images posted for scholarly or educational
purposes as long as the user credits the site (and author if
applicable) by name.
The introduction to A Modest Proposalis a partial copy of an
online text written by David Cody, Associate Professor of
English, Hartwick College, for VictorianWeb.org, a site that
permits the use of the text and images posted for scholarly or
educational purposes as long as the user credits the site (and
author if applicable) by name.
The definition of “Satire” was provided by Shmoop. This site
provides a collection of free resources for students and teachers.
“A Modest Proposal” Lesson -