English Literature / Unit 11 ENL 1032 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading Eighteenth-Century Satire
The idea
Eighteenth-century satire usually speaks through a mask, so first separate the speaker from the author. Swift's proposer in "A Modest Proposal" is calm and reasonable, and his reasonableness is the target. Second, identify the method: irony, saying the opposite of what is meant; mock-heroic, using high style for low subjects, as Pope does; or a fictional traveller's report, as in Gulliver's Travels. Third, find the object: who or what is being attacked, such as English exploitation of Ireland, aristocratic triviality, or human pride. Fourth, judge the mode, Horatian and gently amused, or Juvenalian and bitter; the Proposal is Juvenalian, The Rape of the Lock closer to Horatian. Fifth, ask what the satirist wants changed, since Dryden wrote that satire's end is the amendment of vice. The correct reading never takes the mask's proposal at face value.
In practice
Mask, method, object, mode, purpose.
Where people slip
Never attribute the speaker's proposal to the author. Questions on "A Modest Proposal" test whether you can see the irony.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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