Swift’s A Modest Proposal
29 Jan, 2009
820 English and Old English literatures
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most brilliant and shocking satires ever written in English - Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Masquerading as an attempt to end poverty in Ireland once and for all, a Modest Proposal is a short pamphlet that draws the reader into a scheme for economic and industrial horror. Published anonymously but written by Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal lays bare the cruel presumptions, unchecked prejudice, the politics and the poverty of the 18th century, but it also reveals, perhaps more than anything else, the character and the mind of Swift himself.
Guests
- John Mullan
14 episodes
Professor of English at University College London - Judith Hawley
13 episodes
Professor of 18th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London - Ian McBride
2 episodes
Senior Lecturer in the History Department at King's College London
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Programme ID: b00h3650
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00h3650
Auto-category: 823.5 (English Satire)