A Modest Proposal Concerning the Original, the Use And Improvement of Cannibalism in a Commonwealth

by Arion, Ian

• ISBN13: 9781587900877
• ISBN10: 1587900874
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-03-30
• Publisher: Regent Pr

Summary

This brilliant reading of Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland, from being a Burden to their Parents or Country; and for Making them Beneficial to the Publick, demonstrates that the Proposal is seriously intended by Swift and spoken by him in propria persona. It is partly a saturnalian, cannibalistic retaliation against the Irish which satirically devours them for ignoring the sensible "Expedients" he had futilely proposed to enable them to relieve their own "Miseries." Swift's Proposal is also a compassionately cannibalistic alternative to Ireland's current inhumane/all-too-human cannibalism - an alternative which would make the country a true Commonwealth, while sparing the destitute Irish babies and their parents inevitable "Miseries." And Swift's Proposal is a saturnalian revisioning of the "ridiculous tragedy" of his own impoverished family commonwealth - especially of his own early childhood - in a compassionately cannibalistic re-parenting of himself.

Author Biography

Ian Arion, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, California. He is the author of various other works of literary scholarship. Published under his former name, Gardner D. Stout, Jr., they include: ôSpeaker and Satiric Vision in Swift's Tale of a Tub, ôEighteenth-Century Studies, 3 (1969) 175-99; ôSatire and Self-Expression in Swift's Tale of a Tub,ö Studies in the Eighteenth Century, 2 (Canberra, 1973) 323-39; the standard edition of Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy By Mr. Yorick (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967). Professor Arion is currently working on his book entitled: Metamorphoses of Eros: Family Patterns in Western Literature.