.......Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal” to call attention to abuses inflicted on Irish Catholics by well-to-do English Protestants. Swift himself was a Protestant, but he was also a native of Ireland, having been born in Dublin of English parents. He believed England was exploiting and oppressing Ireland. .......Many Irishmen worked farms owned by Englishmen who charged high rents—so high that the Irish were frequently unable to pay them. Consequently, many Irish farming families continually lived on the edge of starvation. .......In “A Modest Proposal,” Swift satirizes the English landlords with outrageous humor, proposing that Irish infants be sold as food at age one, when they are plump and healthy, to give the Irish a new source of income and the English a new food product to bolster their economy and eliminate a social problem. He says his proposal, if adopted, would also result in a reduction in the number of Catholics in Ireland, since most Irish infants—almost all of whom were baptized Catholic—would end up in stews and other dishes instead of growing up to go to Catholic churches. Here, he is satirizing the prejudice of Protestants toward Catholics. .......Swift also satirizes the Irish themselves in his essay, for too many of them had accepted abuse stoically rather than taking action on their own behalf.
kudos val. yea. this whole thing bring light to the poverty of the irish and whatever people, and he is sarcastically saying that they are poor and below the english "landlords" and whatnot, so why not just eat em, and "help" the economy in the same sense, yet he doesnt truely believe this, he is simply shedding light on the downwards glance (i guess you could say) that the poorer irish get from "boss england", and he doesnt wanna eat them, just wants to sarcastically alert people of this subject........................................ i think..
5 comments:
word. this is whack.
eating babies and whatnot.
.......Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal” to call attention to abuses inflicted on Irish Catholics by well-to-do English Protestants. Swift himself was a Protestant, but he was also a native of Ireland, having been born in Dublin of English parents. He believed England was exploiting and oppressing Ireland.
.......Many Irishmen worked farms owned by Englishmen who charged high rents—so high that the Irish were frequently unable to pay them. Consequently, many Irish farming families continually lived on the edge of starvation.
.......In “A Modest Proposal,” Swift satirizes the English landlords with outrageous humor, proposing that Irish infants be sold as food at age one, when they are plump and healthy, to give the Irish a new source of income and the English a new food product to bolster their economy and eliminate a social problem. He says his proposal, if adopted, would also result in a reduction in the number of Catholics in Ireland, since most Irish infants—almost all of whom were baptized Catholic—would end up in stews and other dishes instead of growing up to go to Catholic churches. Here, he is satirizing the prejudice of Protestants toward Catholics.
.......Swift also satirizes the Irish themselves in his essay, for too many of them had accepted abuse stoically rather than taking action on their own behalf.
kudos val.
yea.
this whole thing bring light to the poverty of the irish and whatever people, and he is sarcastically saying that they are poor and below the english "landlords" and whatnot, so why not just eat em, and "help" the economy in the same sense, yet he doesnt truely believe this, he is simply shedding light on the downwards glance (i guess you could say) that the poorer irish get from "boss england", and he doesnt wanna eat them, just wants to sarcastically alert people of this subject........................................ i think..
I'm impressed. Intellectual conversation happening here. Kudos to you both.
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