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A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick
Opening lines:
It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passeng ...more
A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick
Opening lines:
It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passeng ...more
Swift's satire on social and economic ills of the time and the heartless attitude toward the poor is brilliant. It is timeless and could apply to conditions in the US today.
...more
I know that this pamphlet is satirical in nature; but I just cannot give a book, that (even in sarcasim) recomends killing and eating children with salt and pepper for flavoring, a higher rating.
Hard to stomach but so well written.
Spring 2019, DC/AP IV, audio & print:
A short, short read, but adding it in for the same reason I still list chapbooks, because they are too. This gorgeous, yet long, treatise on the treatment of the Irish was part of our Metaphysical/Enlightenment two week sampler. I hadn't read it since my early twenties in college, but I deeply loved getting to listen to/read it again. To hear the utter seriousness it's delivered with, while the twist of satire makes you hang on, horrified and intrigued like ...more
A short, short read, but adding it in for the same reason I still list chapbooks, because they are too. This gorgeous, yet long, treatise on the treatment of the Irish was part of our Metaphysical/Enlightenment two week sampler. I hadn't read it since my early twenties in college, but I deeply loved getting to listen to/read it again. To hear the utter seriousness it's delivered with, while the twist of satire makes you hang on, horrified and intrigued like ...more
Well done but the subject matter...
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