A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift | Samuel J. Rogal (essay date April 1968)
Samuel J. Rogal (essay date April 1968)
SOURCE: Rogal, Samuel J. “The Timelessness of A Modest Proposal.” English Record 18, no. 4 (April 1968): 48-53.
[Rogal observes in the following essay that A Modest Proposal has endured as a work of consequence because its rhetorical composition overshadows its outdated subject matter.]
Ricardo Quintana labels A Modest Proposal as the “greatest of all the later writings on Ireland and his [Swift's] last prose masterpiece. …”1 Apparently he is at least equating the quality of the 1729 essay with the earlier, more developed, and better known Tale of a Tub, Battle of the Books (both 1704), and Gulliver's Travels (1726). Why would a Swift scholar preface his discussion of A Modest Proposal by referring to it as a “great prose masterpiece”? The answers are not only clear, but important to the discussion of the essay as being timeless....
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