Sender

The sender of “A Modest Proposal” is Jonathan Swift, who was already a well-known satirist at the time when “A Modest Proposal” was published in response to worsening conditions in Ireland. However, the text was originally published anonymously, so it is important to differentiate between the sender Jonathan Swift and the persona of the speaker or the narrator of the text.

Jonathan Swift intended to criticise the tough attitude of many social groups towards the poor in Ireland, but to do so he assumed the persona of a heartless speaker; of someone who did not see anything wrong with eating children, but was more concerned with reducing the number of the poor in a “cheap, easy, and effectual” (p. 8, ll. 13-14) manner.

Consequently, the speaker/narrator of the text apparently builds authority and credibility by referring to economic and demographic statistics, or to the authority of other figures such as “a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London” (p. 3, ll. 11-12) and...