SOURCE: Rogal, Samuel J. “The Timelessness of A Modest Proposal.” English Record 18, no. 4 (April 1968): 48-53.

Rogal observes in the following essay that A Modest Proposal has endured as a work of consequence because its rhetorical composition overshadows its outdated subject matter.

Ricardo Quintana labels A Modest Proposal as the “greatest of all the later writings on Ireland and his [Swift's] last prose masterpiece. …”¹ Apparently he is at least equating the quality of the 1729 essay with the earlier, more developed, and better known Tale of a Tub, Battle of the Books (both 1704), and Gulliver's Travels (1726). Why would a Swift scholar preface his discussion of A Modest Proposal by referring to it as a “great prose masterpiece”? The answers are not only clear, but important to the discussion of the essay as being timeless. First, the content is limited to a specific time, locale, and set of circumstances. Second, Swift...