SOURCE: Thaddeus, Janice. “Elizabeth Hamilton's Modern Philosophers and the Uncertainties of Satire.” In Cutting Edges: Postmodern Critical Essays on Eighteenth-Century Satire, edited by James E. Gill, pp. 395-418. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Thaddeus suggests that the text of Memoirs of Modern Philosophers displays a “Ventriloquist/Dummy” satirical technique (as defined by Margaret Doody), which allows it to subversively illustrate and support Godwinian philosophy while pointing out its potential abuses and limitations.

Elizabeth Hamilton's Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800) was a book too intelligent for its audience. Satire requires especially proficient readers, but this need for a canny audience—especially at certain historical moments—breeds paradoxical effects. Some of the best readers deliberately reconfigure the text, ignoring whatever might hurt or change them. Satire, wrote Jonathan Swift in A Tale of a Tub, “'Tis but a Ball bandied to and fro, and every Man...