A Modest Proposal

Challenger’s program: Irish LiteratureA Modest PROPOSAL : Challenger’s program: Irish LiteratureA Modest PROPOSAL Dr Peter Guy Chuo University

Irish Geography : Irish Geography Ireland is an island located at the far Western edge of Europe in the Atlantic Ocean

Population of the Republic of Ireland : Population of the Republic of Ireland Irish population = approximately 4 million 25% are under the age of 30 About 14% now new immigrants (as of the last 5-8 years) Centuries of emigration (late 18th – 1970s) have resulted in an Irish population dispersed around the English-speaking world (the “Irish Diaspora”) Status as a “new nation” has made the Irish very conscious of a distinctive identity

Brief History : Brief History The first reliable historical event in Irish history, recorded in the Chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine, is the ordination by Pope Celestine I of Palladius as the first bishop to Irish Christians in 431 - which demonstrates that there were already Christians living in Ireland. The mission of Saint Patrick is traditionally dated around the same time – the earliest date for his arrival in Ireland in the Irish annals is 432 – although Patrick's own writings contain nothing securely dateable.

Political Divisions : Political Divisions

Viking Raids and Settlements,793-1014 : Viking Raids and Settlements,793-1014

Vikings : Vikings The first recorded Viking raid in Irish history occurred in 795 when Vikings, possibly from Norway looted the island ofLambay.  This was followed by a raid on the coast of Brega in 798, and raids on the coast of Connacht in 807.These early Viking raids were generally small in scale and quick.

Vikings : Vikings The Viking raids on Ireland resumed in 821, and intensified during the following decades. The Vikings were beginning to establish fortified encampments,  longports, along the Irish coast and overwintering in Ireland instead of retreating to Scandinavia or British bases. The first known longports were at Linn Dúachaill (Annagassan) and Duiblinn (on the River Liffey, at or near present Dublin).

Vikings : Vikings A significant new trait from the middle of the 9th century was that the Norse now also entered alliances with various Irish rulers. 1014 – Battle of Clonfarf: “The battle of Clontarf was not a struggle between the Irish and the Norse for the sovereignty of Ireland; neither was it a great national victory which broke the power of the Norse forever (long before Clontarf the Norse had become a minor political force in Irish affairs). In fact Clontarf was part of the internal struggle for sovereignty and was essentially the revolt of the Leinstermen against the dominance of Brian, a revolt in which their Norse allies played an important but secondary role.”

Norman Arrival and Settlement (Marriage of Aoife & Strongbow; romanticized version by Daniel Maclise, 1854) : Norman Arrival and Settlement (Marriage of Aoife & Strongbow; romanticized version by Daniel Maclise, 1854)

Norman Conquest : Norman Conquest 1155 – Laudabiliter 1171 – Henry II invades The Cambro-Norman invasion resulted in the founding of walled borough towns, numerous castles and churches, the importing of tenants and the increase in agriculture and commerce.

Clash of Cultures (Anglo-Norman vs. native Irish) : Clash of Cultures (Anglo-Norman vs. native Irish)

Norman Conquest : Norman Conquest 1300 – 1350 – Raids upon settlers drew Norman Lords into Irish orbit. Outside the Pale, the Hiberno-Norman lords adopted the Irish language and customs, becoming known as the Old English, and in the words of a contemporary English commentator, became "more Irish than the Irish themselves."

Turlough O’Neill submits to Sir Henry Sidney(circa 1567) : Turlough O’Neill submits to Sir Henry Sidney(circa 1567)

Tudor Plantations : Tudor Plantations 1536 – Henry VIII – Reformation From the mid-16th and into the early 17th century, crown governments carried out a policy of colonisation known as Plantations. Scottish and English Protestants were sent as colonists to the provinces of Munster, Ulster and the counties of Laois and Offaly.

Tudor Plantation : Tudor Plantation In the early years of the 17th century, it looked possible for a time that, because of immigration of English and Scottish settlers, Ireland could be peacefully integrated into British society. However, this was prevented by the continued discrimination by the English authorities against Irish Catholics on religious grounds.

The Protestant Ascendancy : The Protestant Ascendancy Plantations, war, emigration and Penal Laws helped to effect a gradual transfer of land from Catholic to Protestant hands between 1641 and 1703, as these maps show.

English Civil War : English Civil War 1642 – 1652 – Catholic Majority side with Charles I - Oliver Cromwell – Atrocities. Result? As punishment, almost all lands owned by Irish Catholics were confiscated and given to British settlers. The remaining Catholic landowners were transplanted to Connacht. In addition, Catholics were barred from the Irish Parliament altogether, forbidden to live in towns and from marrying Protestants. It has been calculated that up to a third of Ireland's population died in these wars, either in fighting, or in the accompanying famine and plague.

Oliver Cromwell : Oliver Cromwell

War of the Two Kings : War of the Two Kings James II deposed in 1688 Arrives in Ireland in 1690 backed by multi-national force. Battle of the Boyne Penal Laws - to ensure that the Irish Catholic landed classes would not be in a position to repeat their rebellions of the 17th century. As a result of these laws, Catholic landownership fell from around 14% in 1691 to around 5% in the course of the next century.

Battle of the Boyne : Battle of the Boyne

18th Century : 18th Century In the wake of the wars of conquest of the 17th century, Irish antagonism towards England was aggravated by the economic situation of Ireland in the 18th century. The Protestant Anglo-Irish absentee landlords drew off some £800,000 in the early part of the century, rising to £1 million, in an economy that had a GDP of about £4 million. Completely deforested of timber for exports (usually to the Royal Navy) and for a temporary iron industry in the course of the 17th century, Irish estates turned to the export of salt beef, pork, butter, and hard cheese through the slaughterhouse and port city of Cork, which supplied England, the British navy and the sugar islands of theWest Indies.

18th Century : 18th Century The bishop of Cloyne wondered “How a foreigner could possibly conceive that half the inhabitants are dying of hunger in a country so abundant in foodstuffs?" In the 1740s, these economic inequalities, when combined with an exceptionally cold winter and poor harvest, led directly to the famine of 1740-1741, which killed about 400,000 people

Jonathan Swift : Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland, the son of Protestant Anglo-Irish parents: his ancestors had been Royalists, and all his life he would be a High-Churchman. In 1688 William of Orange invaded England and an ambitious Swift took the opportunity to go to England, where he hoped to gain preferment in the Anglican Church.

Jonathan Swift : Jonathan Swift

Slide 26 : 1694 – Returns to Ireland 1695 – Takes holy orders, moves back and forth between England & Ireland thereafter. Between 1696 and 1699 Swift composed most of his first great work, A Tale of a Tub, a prose satire on the religious extremes represented by Roman Catholicism and Calvinism.

Slide 27 : In 1707 Swift was sent to London as emissary of Irish clergy seeking remission of tax on Irish clerical incomes. His requests were rejected, however, by the Whig government and by Queen Anne, who suspected him of being irreligious. In 1720 he began work upon Gulliver's Travels, intended, as he says in a letter to Pope, "to vex the world, not to divert it."

Gulliver’s Travels : Gulliver’s Travels

Politics? : Politics? Anti-Catholic absolutism. The political pamphlets, however, which he would ultimately produce while he lived in what was for him a strange kind of exile in his native Ireland — the tracts and satires like "A Modest Proposal" in which he defended the interests of his church and his class (and, by implication, his country) against what he had come increasingly to recognize as English colonialism

Stereotypes of the Irish : Stereotypes of the Irish Irish-speaking vs. English-speaking Illiterate (an oral culture) vs. literate Therefore, primitive vs. civilized Tribal vs. national Musical dancing (performers) musicians (harper) Feckless (irresponsible, carefree, drunken) vs. practical, responsible, reliable.

Views of the Irish : Views of the Irish

Views of the Irish : Views of the Irish

Views of the Irish : Views of the Irish

A Modest Proposal : A Modest Proposal "A Modest Proposal" is an essay that uses satire to make its point. A satire is a literary work that attacks or pokes fun at vices, abuses, stupidity, and/or any other fault or imperfection. Satire may make the reader laugh at, or feel disgust for, the person or thing satirized.

A Modest Proposal : A Modest Proposal The essay was originally printed in the form of a pamphlet. At the time of its publication, 1729, a pamphlet was a short work that took a stand on a political, religious, or social issue—or any other issue of public interest. Writers of pamphlets, called pamphleteers, played a significant role in inflaming or resolving many of the great controversies in Europe in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, as well as in the political debate leading up to the American Revolution.

Slide 36 : 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.

Satire : Satire 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.

Satire : Satire 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

Irony : Irony The dominant figure of speech in "A Modest Proposal" is verbal irony, in which a writer or speaker says the opposite of what he means. Swift's masterly use of this device makes his main argument—that the Irish deserve better treatment from the English—powerful and dreadfully amusing. For example, to point out that the Irish should not be treated like animals, Swift compares them to animals, as in this example: "I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.”

Irony : Irony Also, to point out that disease, famine, and substandard living conditions threaten to kill great numbers of Irish, Swift cheers their predicament as a positive development: “Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed, and I have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known that they are every day dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young laborers, they are now in as hopeful a condition; they cannot get work, and consequently pine away for want of nourishment, to a degree that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labor, they have not strength to perform it; and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come.”

Allusions : Allusions Barbadoes (Barbados): Easternmost West Indies island, settled by the British in 1627. When Swift published "A Modest Proposal" in 1729, the island's plantation owners used slaves to produce sugar for European consumption.   Dublin: The Irish city mentioned in "A Modest Proposal." It is the capital of Ireland.   Flay: Remove skin.  Formosa: Portuguese name for Taiwan, a Chinese-inhabited island off the southeast coast of China.  Papist: Roman Catholic.

Allusions : Allusions Pretender: James Francis Edward Stuart (1688-1766), son of King James II. After he died in 1701, the French king then proclaimed James II's young son, James Francis Edward Stuart, to be the rightful king of England. The English Parliament then enacted laws designed to prevent seating another Catholic king. Nevertheless, in succeeding years, James Francis repeatedly attempted to regain the throne, and the British eventually nicknamed him the Old Pretender.   Psalmanazar, George: French forger and impostor who traveled widely under different personas. In one of his most famous schemes, he pretended to be from Formosa (present-day Taiwan), of which little was known in the Europe of his time. In London, he published a book about Formosa in which he wrote that Formosan law permitted a husband to eat a wife if she committed adultery. Psalmanazar had never visited Formosa; the whole book was made up. Nevertheless, many Englishmen believed what he had written

Themes : Themes Exploitation of the Downtrodden Beneath Swift’s audacious satire is a serious theme: that English overlords are shamelessly exploiting and oppressing the impoverished people of Ireland through unfair laws, high rents charged by absentee landlords, and other injustices.  Prejudice At the time of the publication of "A Modest Proposal," many British Protestants disdained Roman Catholics--especially Irish Catholics--and enacted laws limiting their ability to thrive and prosper.  Irish Inaction Swift's satirical language also chides the Irish themselves for not acting with firm resolve to improve their lot.

Themes : Themes Economic Inequality In the beginning of the essay, he expresses great sympathy for the beggars of Ireland, describing their destitution in detail. His solution of eating babies applies primarily to the babies of the poor; the title of the piece states that this is a proposal for making the “children of poor people” ultimately “beneficial to the public.” The writer suggests that the landlords ought to eat the babies, as they have already “devoured” their parents. The writer here is implying that the rich metaphorically “devour” the poor, achieving success largely at the expense of the lower classes. The writer states in his final paragraph that his intention is not only to “relieve the poor” but also to “give pleasure to the rich.”

Themes : Themes Cultural Arrogance and Colonialism The narrator of “A Modest Proposal” is English, but he is making prescriptions for the Irish. With this structure, Swift reveals the cultural arrogance of the English and the political subjugation felt by the Irish. Swift mocks the view of the English as civilized and the Irish as an uncivilized “barbaric” or “savage” people. The narrator says that poor parents will support his proposal because it would relieve them of the burden of caring for their young. Swift's narrator suggests that family is nothing to the Irish, exposing British prejudices yet reinforcing the idea of communal Irish struggle.

Slide 46 :