A Modest Proposal

[Corpus_Cristi]

Just to cheer you up, sigh, you and I are not the only people who have or will differ on the character and modus of Jonathan Swift. This is an extract from an article by one of his contemporaries, Daniel Corkery (14 February 1878 – 31 December 1964),an Irish politician, writer and teacher. (who states in his work Ourselves and Dean Swift, that Swift was ‘rabidly anti-catholic’), sorry can’t supply the link, but if you have the resources and can, please let me have it.

“Ourselves and Dean Swift
D Corkery - Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 1934 - JSTOR
Swift’s character is a quagmire for writers. They are not agreed on any one of his faculties. Thackeray speaks. of ’ his savage heart; but for Churton Collins his heart was as tender as a woman’s. Mr. Gwynn says one must be either for him or against; he himself is for, which argues that…”

The link I supplied in my earlier post is:
victorianweb.org/previctorian/swift/religionov.html
Written and compiled by David Cody, Associate Professor of English, Hartwick College.

For your interest, and others who may like, they have other pre-Victorian authors to look up info on:
victorianweb.org/previctorian/misc/authors.html

I also came across this google book, by now Sir Walter Scott, The Memoirs of Jonathan Swift:
.scholar.google.co.za/scholar?cluster=2328177878718783472&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5

My opinion is that to fully appreciate and benefit from a work, one must have a fair knowledge of the person who wrote it and their particular view and circumstances. A superficial acceptance, for the joy of it, is ok too!

You seem to be preoccupied with Swift’s alleged anti-Catholicism. My only contention is that whoever Swift may have been, his work has to measure up to its message and not the messanger. However much an anti-Catholic Swift may have been, this work in particular operates in such a way as to highlight something else in his ideology, perhaps that while he may have been an enemy to the Catholic faith, he felt pity for human beings who were suffering and wanted to change minds with an extreme satire on the way many thought of Irish Catholics in that place and at that time. The smartest people are not unilateral in their thinking, and Swift was a pretty smart cookie.

 

[Dee_S]

Ok.:tiphat: Well said, and I take your point.

"Swift once stated that “satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.”

MODEST PROPOSAL (1729) the narrator recommends with grotesque logic, that Irish poverty can be solved by the breeding up their infants as food for the rich. When the actor Peter O’Toole read it  for some reason  in the reopening of the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin in 1984, several members from the audience departed. Swift has been labelled as a hater of mankind. “Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth, " Swift wrote in a letter to Alexander Pope.”
scribd.com/doc/4937148/The-sociological-description-of-Ireland-in-Jonathan-Swifts-A-Modest-Proposal-

I agree that he may have had pity for human beings, as seems is the case in the letter he wrote to Alexander Pope.

 

[Corpus_Cristi]

Ok.:tiphat: Well said, and I take your point.

"Swift once stated that “satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.”

MODEST PROPOSAL (1729) the narrator recommends with grotesque logic, that Irish poverty can be solved by the breeding up their infants as food for the rich. When the actor Peter O’Toole read it  for some reason  in the reopening of the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin in 1984, several members from the audience departed. Swift has been labelled as a hater of mankind. “Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth, " Swift wrote in a letter to Alexander Pope.”
scribd.com/doc/4937148/The-sociological-description-of-Ireland-in-Jonathan-Swifts-A-Modest-Proposal-

I agree that he may have had pity for human beings, as seems is the case in the letter he wrote to Alexander Pope.

I’m glad we could find common ground. To be honest I don’t know a terrible amount about Swift. I studied a couple of his works in high school along with a broad outline of his life. Perhaps he was anti-Catholic. It would make a bit more sense since he was a member of the Anglican clergy. I should probably read up more on him; he’s a rather interesting one.

 

[Dee_S]

I’m glad we could find common ground. To be honest I don’t know a terrible amount about Swift. I studied a couple of his works in high school along with a broad outline of his life. Perhaps he was anti-Catholic. It would make a bit more sense since he was a member of the Anglican clergy. I should probably read up more on him; he’s a rather interesting one.

Well, you’re ahead of me there. I knew nothing about him, not even that he was the author of Gullivers Travels! But it has been a good learning curve for me, and I think I know a bit more than when we started this discussion.
All the best, hopefully we’ll meet again elsewhere.
God bless

 

[Corpus_Cristi]

Well, you’re ahead of me there. I knew nothing about him, not even that he was the author of Gullivers Travels! But it has been a good learning curve for me, and I think I know a bit more than when we started this discussion.
All the best, hopefully we’ll meet again elsewhere.
God bless

Haha, interestingly enough, Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal were the two works we looked at.

And likewise.

God bless,

Rob H.