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Literary Analysis Of The Special Form Of Satire Swift Invented For A Modest Proposal, Charles Kay Smith

Charles Kay Smith

Some of Swift's more conventional classical figures of speech have already been noted, though more or less in isolation to one another as well as to larger designs and aesthetic aims. Swift's genius in A Modest Proposal is to create a speaker whose monologue keeps two distinct styles operational at all times. The style of which the speaker is aware is constantly opposed by covert and innovative verbal and grammatical techniques which the proposer sets in motion but of which he remains unaware, which slowly but surely turns a reader's sympathies against him and against those who share his callous …