SOURCE: Davis, Lloyd. “Reading Irony: Dialogism in A Modest Proposal.” Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 77 (May 1992): 32-55.

In the following essay, Davis discusses dialogism and its role in the ironic portrayal of Ireland's sociopolitical situation in A Modest Proposal.

That Swift's A Modest Proposal is firmly placed in two canons of English, those of composition and literature, suggests that it fulfils certain values emphasized across the discipline. Two discursive features that have been frequently valued in this work and have seen it elevated into the tradition are style and character. An ironical style produces its function as a model for imitation in composition textbooks, while the alternating personae of proposer and author, which affect the shifting responses of the reader, underlie its reputation as a piece of complex and esteemed literary characterization. Style and character would appear to offer certain critical grounds for the...