The Jonathan Swift Festival, which marks 350 years since the writer’s birth, starts today. Swift Scholar Brendan Twomey from Trinity College Dublin joined guest-host Kay Sheehy on Arena to discuss one of Swift’s most impactful works, A Modest Proposal.
A mere 14 pages long, it made waves in Dublin and beyond when it was published almost 300 years ago for suggesting that poor children could be consumed as food. But does the satire hold any significance today? Brendan gave some context to the work.
“This was the third year of famine in Ireland…the problem in Ireland was very, very serious…Swift, for years, had been trying to find solutions to Ireland’s economic problems and this is actually an angry riposte to, you know, ‘If you won’t do all these sensible ideas, here’s a really crazy one for you”.
Brendan told Kay that the main intent was “parodying early statistical and economic treatises” with the attention to detail regarding numbers of available children in the text. The target of Swift’s anger, he believes, was the British government and the Irish elite and merchant class – a parody borne out of frustration.
“He’s saying to them, ‘You have more power than you think…You haven’t been listening so here’s all that’s left’.”
Listen back to the full discussion on Swift’s A Modest Proposal here.