COMEDY

106 POLITICSWhat should I do in Rome? I am no good at lying.If a book’s bad, I can’t praise it, or go around ordering copies.I don’t know the stars; I can’t hire out as assassinWhen some young man wants his father knocked off for a price;…I am no lookout for thieves, so I cannot expect a commissionOn some governor’s staff. I’m a useless corpse, or a cripple.Who has a pull these days, except your yes men and stoogesWith blackmail in their hearts, yet smart enough to keep silent?(Juvenal, 1958:35)Juvenal enjoyed a particular vogue in the eighteenth century whenEnglish authors rediscovered satirical models as a powerful form ofsocial commentary. The most influential of these was undoubtedly thecomplex Irish writer and divine Jonathan Swift (1667–1745). Swift’ssatire, although difficult to define absolutely, adopts the Juvenalian toneof bitter indignation, appalled by man’s inhumanity and the greed andhypocrisy of political and religious factionalism. Swift’s misanthropy isvoiced through the techniques of irony and parody, deploying an urbaneand calming narrative tone to investigate the darkest and most unsettlingtopics, and using pre-existing literary modes to convey them. This isclearly the technique of A Modest Proposal (1729), a short text thatoutlines a plan to address ‘the present deplorable state’ of Ireland byselling babies to be eaten as food (Swift, 1993:2181). A ModestProposal is a parody of the political treatises and pamphlets publishedin abundance at this time, ventriloquizing the reasonable tone of theconcerned philanthropist. ‘I shall now humbly propose my ownthoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection’, writesthe urbane narrator, before telling us that,I have been assured by a very knowing American of myacquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed isat a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food,whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubtthat it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.(Swift, 1993:2182)The ethics of cannibalism and degradations of the Irish under colonialEnglish rule are entirely flattened amidst the logical computations andanalyses of the humanitarian benefits outlined by the pamphleteer. Such