Swift

Much to my surprise, I've been working on an essay for my ANU English Literature course on Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. For many critics, it's Swift's most accomplished satirical short prose work. My jury has always been out on Swift and it remains out still. But there is a lot going on with this outrageous pastiche of the type of early-18th Century pamphlets that seemed to circulate endlessly, pointlessly and much too frequently among the chattering classes of Georgian England. It's no bad thing that I'm reappraising Swift to some degree. There's plenty I can learn and it's usually good to prove yourself wrong. It suggests you're still asking questions of yourself.

Here's Peter O'Toole reading A Modest Proposal on the occasion, thirty two years ago, of the re-opening of the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin. He was booed and there were walkouts. Nearly 300 years after Swift published his pamphlet anonymously, it seems his words still had and have the power to disrupt the cosy comfort of Ireland's middle classes.