A Modest Proposal by Johnathan Swift and The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope are both written in genre of satire, but with different purposes. The plots and historical backgrounds of these literary works are also different.
The Rape of the Lock was ordered to be written by Alexander Pope. The story that lies in the plot is real and happened in London involving young Arabella Fermor and Lord Petre. The last one cut off the lock of his bellowed Belle that became the reason their families became enemies. The satirical poem was written in order to make fun of the situation and people that considered losing a lock of the hair a big and serious deal with the help of exaggeration. The poem is written in Horatian tone – cheerful and light-hearted.
Johnathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal with a more serious purpose and is considered to be more effective. In his work he mocks and criticizes the way of solving social problems in Ireland. Swift proposes to eat babies that will help to avoid poverty and unemployment. It is written in Juvenalian satire in a harsh tone. The purpose of it is to provoke the government to make some changes in their policy and to consider it. Swift even gives real ways that can help to solve the problems in the country by using paralepsis – a rhetorical device used to bring up the subject by denying it. He devotes a whole long paragraph and writes: “Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound” (Swift, 687)
In my opinion, modern popular satire is different from the satire by Pope and Swift. Nowadays people like such forms of satire as parody and social satire that is present in various TV-series and shows. Such satire has a purpose to mock and criticize having no morality or a serious hidden message.
Work Cited
Swift, Jonathan. “A Modest Proposal”. Writing Today. Ed. Richard Johnson-Sheehan and Charles Paine. Boston: Pearson, 2013. Print.
