Jonathan Swift is famed as a satirist. Swift's satire is savage, akin to Jesus' use when excoriating the Pharisees. Yet Swift's use of irony, misapplied logic, and outrageous hypothesis spared him his opponents' ire.
He defined satire as “a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
Swift's exposure of human sinfulness through hyperbole means that while none are directly guilty of his 'solution', all are implicated in the problem he identifies. More than addressing a specific situation, he is addressing the inherent problems with commodifiying human nature and treating people as means not ends.
15 сен 2024
