Conviction

Every time I visit the Schola Tutorials homepage, I am convicted. Mr. Callihan, my Great Books tutor, has this excellent quote posted:

"If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come."

--C. S. Lewis, "Learning in War-Time", The Weight of Glory

Amen to that.

Posted by Nicole Bianchi at 10:10 PM |

The Deep Heart's Core

The Theme of Alienation in 20th Century Irish Literature

Read "The Dead" here and "Lake Isle of Innisfree" here.


The twentieth century saw a new modernist strain in literature. Among its various characteristics, Modernism emphasized the alienation of certain individuals within an industrialized, urban world. While unique in certain aspects, this feature was merely an extension of its predecessor Romanticism. This earlier philosophy had developed the idea of the noble savage – how man is sinless at birth, but gradually the industrialized world corrupts him. Only in Nature can man remain perfect. In “The Dead,” James Joyce explores the effects of urbanization upon an individual; conversely, William Butler Yeats in his poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” contrasts how a return to Nature can essentially purify and restore peace to a person’s soul.

Famed for his complex character studies and utilization of the stream-of-consciousness technique, Joyce is one of the most famous writers of the Modernist era and of Ireland. His collection of short stories, The Dubliners, displays his immense talent. “The Dead” is the last story in this collection and perhaps the most famous and the most powerful. The main character is a young married man, Gabriel, who struggles with his identity as an Irishman during that country’s political upheavals. At a dinner party, one of the guests invites him to visit the Aran Isles on the west coast of Ireland. Gabriel protests that he would rather go to France or Germany and then admits in an outburst of passion, “To tell you the truth….I’m sick of my own country, sick of it!” (2515). His disgust for his homeland, however, stems from his disconnection with his Irish heritage, rather than a true dissatisfaction with the country. Indeed, his answer was provoked after the dinner guest had exclaimed, “And haven’t you your own land to visit….that you know nothing of, your own people, and your own country?” (2515). Later on, Gabriel continues to evince his anger over the loss of his heritage by declaring in his speech,

But we are living in a skeptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humor which belonged to an older day” (2523).

The Irish heritage primarily centered on the importance of the land, for the Irish had always been farmers. By living in the city of Dublin, Gabriel is alienated from the real Ireland of lush green fields and rolling hills. His schooling has drowned him in the intellectual and philosophical thought of his age, but has given him nothing of his own culture to hold onto. The tension grows when one of the guests begins to sing an old Irish song, awakening strange passions within Gabriel. He knows that the song has some sort of symbolic meaning, but he cannot quite discern what it is. After returning home, his wife begins to tell him of a boy she had known long ago who used to sing the same song to her: a country boy who died of love for her. As he listens to his wife’s story, he suddenly realizes that he has never truly loved her before – he realizes the wall that seems to stand between him and her, between him and the old Ireland.

His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling (2534).

The country boy symbolizes the purity of Nature, the purity of the true, old Ireland. Gabriel is the new Ireland, oppressed by British rule and raising children who know only of the present urbanization. This last quote shows that Gabriel has no identity in this urban world and no one ever can. Only in that old Ireland could the qualities of humanity and kindly humor exist; only in that old Ireland could he have truly loved his wife as the country boy did.

Romanticism probably influenced Yeats more than it did Joyce. Indeed, Yeats drew his poetic inspiration from Shelley and Blake, even editing several of Blake’s poems. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (Innisfree is a small island in western Ireland) almost seems like a tribute to these earlier writers with its idyllic atmosphere. It describes a person in either a town or city, yearning to “arise and go /…to Innisfree” (1). The person of the poem is not alienated from Nature like Gabriel, however, but rather he is alienated from the city where he lives. The reason why he decides to return to Nature is because he cannot escape from it.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core (9-12).

Gabriel was faced with a similar dilemma in “The Dead.” He also was constantly haunted by this sound “in the deep heart’s core” but he decided that there was no solution to his problem. Gradually, this old world of Nature would fade away and people would be left hopeless and in despair. Yeats, however, still shares a glimmer of hope. Nature is not destroyed and there are still places that will welcome the solitary traveler, places like Innisfree and Gabriel’s Aran Isles. Just as Gabriel had drawn the conclusion that only in the old Ireland could he have truly loved his wife, so the speaker in this poem declares that he can only find peace in Innisfree, “for peace comes dropping slow, / Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings” (5-6). But his peace is truly tangible for his Innisfree exists whereas Gabriel’s old Ireland did not.

The word ‘alienation’ often has bad connotations, but the Merriam Webster dictionary defines it simply as “a withdrawing of a person's affections from an object or position of former attachment.” Romanticism showed that there were two types of alienation in mankind, one that was bad and the other good, and no middle ground in between. The Modernists delved even more deeply into these themes, oftentimes reaching very different conclusions as Joyce and Yeats did. To many, the past was lost and irrecoverable. Like Gabriel, they could only picture themselves as shadowy ghosts living in a world merely the faint outline of its lost glory. But others, like Yeats, still rejoiced in the hope that was offered to them – for the beauty and peace of Nature could never fade as long as it abided in the “deep heart’s core.”

Works Cited

Joyce, James. “The Dead.” 1914. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors. Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor. 8th edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006, pgs. 2507-2534.

Yeat, William Butler. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” 1890. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors. Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor. 8th edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006, pg. 2391.

Posted by Nicole Bianchi at 12:02 PM |

Chesterton on "Cyrano De Bergerac"

Cyrano De Bergerac, a verse drama in five acts, was performed for the first time in 1897 and published the following year. Set in 17th-century Paris, the action revolves around the emotional problems of the noble, swashbuckling Cyrano, who, despite his many gifts, feels that no woman can ever love him because he has an enormous nose. It is one of my favorite plays. And it was one of Chesterton's favorite plays too.

In his essay "French and English," G. K. Chesterton comments on several French plays. Then writes, "I do not know much of humanity, especially when humanity talks in French. But I know when a thing is meant to uplift the human soul, and when it is meant to depress it. I know that Cyrano de Bergerac...was meant to encourage man."

Now, you know if Chesterton liked something it had to be very, very good. So go run down to your bookstore or library and grab a copy of Cyrano De Bergerac. It really does uplift the human soul.

Posted by Nicole Bianchi at 11:16 AM |

A Letter from C. S. Lewis

A letter from C.S. Lewis to his best friend, Arthur Greeves, written when Lewis was seventeen:

I have had a great literary experience this week. I have discovered yet another author to add to our circle--our very own set: never since I first read 'The well at the world's end' have I enjoyed a book so much--and indeed I think my new 'find' is quite as good as Malory or Morris himself. The book, to get to the point, is George Macdonald's 'Faerie Romance', Phantastes which I picked up by hazard in a rather tired Everyman copy [...]. At any rate, whatever the book you are reading now, you simply MUST get this at once: and it is quite worth getting in a superior Everyman binding too.

Of course it is hopeless for me to try and describe it, but when you have followed the hero Anodos along that little stream to the faery wood, have heard about the terrible ash tree and how the shadow of this gnarled, knotted hand falls upon the book the hero is reading, when you have read about the faery palace--just like that picture in the Dulac book--and heard the episode of Cosmo, I know that you will quite agree with me. You must not be disappointed at the first chapter which is rather conventional faery tale style, and after it you won't be able to stop until you have finished. There are one or two poems in the tale--as in the Morris tales you know--which, with one or two exceptions are shockingly bad, so don't TRY to appreciate them: it is just a sign, isn't it of how some geniuses can't work in metrical forms--another example being the Brontes.

I quite agree with what you say about buying books, and love all the planning and scheming beforehand, and if they come by post, finding the neat little parcel waiting for you on the hall table and rushing upstairs to open it in the privacy of your own room. Some people--my father for instance--laugh at us for being so serious over our pleasures, but I think a thing can't be properly enjoyed unless you take it in earnest, don't you? What I can't understand about you though is how you can get a nice new book and still go on stolidly with the one you are at: I always like to be able to start the new one on the day I get it, and for that reason wait to buy it until the old one is done. But then of course you have so much more money to throw about than I.

Talking about finishing books, I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say 'at last', I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he hoped to do--so much have I enjoyed it.

[C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis: Volume I, Letter of 7 March 1916]

Posted by Nicole Bianchi at 11:03 AM |

Home Thoughts, from Abroad

O, TO be in England
Now that April 's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Robert Browning

Posted by Nicole Bianchi at 10:46 PM |

William Wordsworth's "Preface to Lyrical Ballads"

In 1798, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (two of the leading poets of the Romantic literary movement in England) published a volume of their poems entitled Lyrical Ballads. To the first edition Wordsworth attached an “Advertisement” that briefly explained the purpose of the poems. By the third edition, however, this “Advertisement” had developed into a much longer Preface or, rather, a sort of “revolutionary manifesto about the nature of poetry” (Norton Anthology of English Literature, pg. 1495). It is revolutionary because Wordsworth crafted it around three main ideals borrowed from the French Revolution – immortalized in that war’s infamous rallying cry, “Liberté, égalité, et fraternité ou la mort!” This liberty, equality, and fraternity (brotherhood) form the basis of Wordsworth’s treatise, a treatise that forever transformed the role of the poet and his poetry.

What is liberty? The French Revolutionaries saw it as a freedom from a despotic regime. To many, it probably meant a complete abolition of all forms of government and a descent into anarchy. The philosophy that influenced the Revolution, however, was much more complex. In 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an Enlightenment philosopher, summed it up nicely in his Social Contract with the phrase, “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains” (The Social Contract, 387). Thirty-two years later, William Blake used this same phrase as inspiration for a line in his poem “London” that speaks of “mind-forged manacles.” Rousseau and Blake saw man as negatively affected by his environment. Primitive man living in nature is perfect, a noble savage, because evil does not come from nature, but from organized society. Wordsworth embraces this belief in his Preface, attempting to show that poetry can be a path towards the liberation of mankind; that is, towards equality and brotherhood. For his poems, he chose subjects from “low and rustic life” because,

In that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity (Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1499).

Using images from “the beautiful and permanent forms of nature” (1498), Wordsworth tries to guide his reader back to man’s primitive and perfect state, releasing him from his mind-forged manacles.

This liberation leads to an equality of all men; something desperately hungered after by the peasants who stormed the Bastille after suffering many years under the oppression of the aristocracy. Wordsworth sees this equality, however, not as an equality of class, but as “the very language of men” (1500), a universal tongue, echoing the eleventh chapter of Genesis in which the whole world had one language. Showing that poetry can be used to return to this equality, Wordsworth exemplifies the role of the poet, writing, “He is a man speaking to men: a man it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul” (1502). The poet is a “translator” for mankind and poetry is “the image of man and nature” (1503). Poetry can appeal to all people and the poet has no restrictions on the truth which he tries to convey. Wordsworth explains,

The poet writes under one restriction only, namely, that of the necessity of giving immediate pleasure to a human being possessed of that information which may be expected from him … as a man (1503).

This equality of speech between one man and another leads to the final element of the Revolutionary philosophy: the brotherhood of mankind. After the Revolution, the French strongly emphasized this ideal by calling each other ‘citizen,’ highlighting their common bond. For poetry, Wordsworth explains that the “poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion” (1504). The universal language that Wordsworth previously spoke of is founded on two principles: passion and knowledge. All human beings have experienced love, anger, fear, and happiness. They have also witnessed the universal order and truth of nature. Because of this, Wordsworth believes that

In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things silently gone out of mind and things violently destroyed, the poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time (1505).

This philosophy of the role of the poet and poetry seems to echo the words that Samuel Johnson had penned years before in his novel Rasselas when he spoke of the poet rising to general and transcendental truths as “the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind” (Rasselas, 1235). Yet, instead of merely offering a short chapter on this topic as Johnson did, Wordsworth expanded the beliefs and supported them with Enlightenment inspired Revolutionary thinking. Because of this, Preface to Lyrical Ballads laid the foundations of a new poetic genre – Romantic poetry, indeed, was unlike any poetry that had been written before, creating a revolution of imagination and embracing ‘the spirit of the age.’

Works Cited

Johnson, Samuel. Rasselas. 1759. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors. Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor. 8th edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006

Wordsworth, William. Preface to Lyrical Ballads. 1802. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors. Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor. 8th edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. 1762. Great Books of the Western World. Robert Maynard Hutchins, Editor in Chief. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

Posted by Nicole Bianchi at 9:50 PM |

Movie Reviews

• Classic Christmas Films - A Top-Ten List
• Finding Forrester - (Spotlight on Writing)
• Finding Neverland - (Spotlight on Writing)
• The Social Network

Posted by Nicole Bianchi at 8:34 PM

The Darkling Plain

[An Explication of Matthew Arnold’s "Dover Beach"]


The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.



During his honeymoon in 1851, Matthew Arnold visited Dover, England. As he strolled along the beach with his wife, he probably paused to listen to the roar of the English Channel, its waves driven wildly against the shore, or to stare up at the vast white chalk cliffs dominating the coastline. This visit would later serve as inspiration for his poem “Dover Beach.” The poem describes a man’s personal loss of faith, exemplifying the contrast between a time when religion was embraced without question and the modern Victorian age that introduced doubt and atheism.

Arnold believed that his poems would eventually “have their day” because they represented “the main movement of mind” of the Victorian world. Although certainly one of the reasons why he gained prominence, Arnold was also a masterful poet, able to create striking pictures with words. “Dover Beach” begins with such a picture of the calm sea, “the tide is full, the moon lies fair / upon the straits” and “the cliffs of England stand, / Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay” (“Dover Beach”, 2-5). It is not only a picture of Dover, however, but of the whole of England. The British Empire had its height in the Victorian age. England, glorious and powerful, dominated much of the world. Yet in this peaceful scene, suddenly, a “grating roar” is heard “of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, / at their return, up the high strand” (10-11). The tranquility of the night has been disturbed by this wild noise: the pebbles symbolize new opinions (for instance, Darwin’s theories on evolution) that are flooding the philosophical spectrum and undermining the Christian worldview. Arnold does not question their veracity, but he admits that they bring “the eternal note of sadness in” (14).

This sound is not new to England, however. Arnold describes Sophocles also hearing it long ago on the Ægean, referring to a passage from Antigone. It is the sound of “human misery” (18), the constant war of differing thoughts and opinions that occurs in any age, country, or culture. Arnold believes nature can be used to discover truths about the world and the sea gives him, like Sophocles, a “thought” (19) that tries to solve this war in his mind. Yet it can hardly offer him a solution. Instead, it reminds Arnold of religion and he compares the real sea to “The Sea of Faith” (21).

This Sea, unlike the sea of nature, can offer man satisfaction for the turmoil in his soul. Indeed, once “at the full, and round earth’s shore” it “lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d” (22-23). It is unclear here whether Arnold is referring to a time period (such as the medieval age) or simply to a previous time in his life when Christianity was accepted with absolute conviction and no uncertainty. Whichever the case, when it was accepted, his life did not experience such dark sadness and fear. As he watches his religious beliefs shattered by the new beliefs of the day (beliefs that question the existence of God and the origins of man), he can only hear The Sea of Faith’s “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, / Retreating, to the breath / Of the night-wind” (25-27). Without Christianity, the world is left naked and forbidding.

Arnold argues, however, that The Sea of Faith was actually a delusion. In reality, the world has “really neither joy, nor love, nor light, / nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain” (32-33). Because Christianity offered these things to Arnold, it must have been false. Arnold has become a nihilist. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, nihilism is a viewpoint that “traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless,” denying “any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths.” He has no way to decide between the warring philosophies because there is no ultimate standard to judge them against. Searching wildly for a solution to this dilemma, Arnold insists on crying out to his “love” (though in the next breath he denounces any love in the world), declaring, “let us be true / to one another!” (29-30). But how can they be true when there is no truth in the world? How can they love one another when love is only a delusion?

No answer is found for these questions. He ends the poem on a note of sorrow, unable to resolve the turmoil in his soul. Instead, he describes himself as on a “darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night” (35-37). For the nihilist, the world is in a constant state of war. Fear and despair are its only realities. Arnold seeks desperately to find a shred of happiness that is not a fantasy, but this fights against his own philosophy. Vainly, he attempts to create a substitution for the relationship between God and man, appealing to his fellow man for help. “Let us be true!” he begs, but they have nothing to guide them, no foundation on which to protect such a relationship – the world is hostile, religion is dead, and nature can give them no answers.

Arnold refused to call himself an atheist, hiding in the supposed comforts of agnosticism, refusing to believe in either the existence or the nonexistence of God. Yet, he rejected religion as superficial, blinding to true reality. “Dover Beach” may, in fact, be his only writing that conceded religion was an answer to chaos in the world: it was deceptive, but it did offer relief and a feigned security. However, Arnold insisted on freeing himself from this self-delusion and wallowing in the despair and darkness of the real world. Nevertheless, the Bible is clear that Arnold has actually thrown away reality for the self-delusion. In Romans, Paul wrote that sinful men “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans, I.18). Further, “they [become] futile in their speculations, and their foolish hearts [are] darkened. Professing to be wise, they [become] fools” (I.21-22). Arnold believed a world of happiness and peace must be a delusion and embraced what he thought was a reality of misery and horror. Indeed, to the unbeliever it is their reality – a “darkling plain” where fools will fight to reject God and hide from the light and truth.

Posted by Nicole Bianchi at 8:39 PM |

Lucifer's Fall

[I wrote this poem several weeks ago after studying poetry in my Brit Lit class. It's in the style of a Shakespearean Sonnet and was inspired by John Milton's Paradise Lost and texts from Isaiah and Revelation.]

Isaiah 14:12

How you have fallen from heaven,
O morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations!



Fallen art thou, son of the bright flamed morn,
With thy dragon’s black tail swept down the stars,
Burning, blazing, blaring into Hell born,
Never to ride skyward after these wars.
Why did thou forsake lofty light-realms to
Perish in a cursed tract of Hades?
And why strive vain against Him always true,
Baring thine heart to this wild disease?
Curséd art thou of all His creatures made,
For once thou strike the heel of His blessed Son –
Arise, Firstborn! And let all be afraid,
Heavens quake until victory is won.
This foul false serpent crush under Thy feet,
Lucifer Hell-chained in final defeat.

Posted by Nicole Bianchi at 1:12 PM |

A Review of "A Modest Proposal"

[To start my new adventures with this blog, I would like to post an essay I recently wrote for my British Literature class.]

Go here to read "A Modest Proposal."

Swift's Great Satire

Satire has existed as far back as ancient Rome (indeed, tradition says that Quintilian, a Roman rhetorician, coined the term), but it was not until the 18th century that it became a true literary genre. This period saw the emergence of such literary giants as Alexander Pope, John Dryden, and Voltaire, all brilliant satirists. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) surpassed them all, however, considered by many the greatest prose satirist in the English language. Satire is a literary work that holds up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn, often employing irony and sarcasm. Swift's short pamphlet “A Modest Proposal” is an excellent example of his superb use of the genre. The piece addresses the Irish famine, attempting to offer a solution for the thousands of starving Irish children. Utilizing three types of persuasion borrowed from Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Swift makes the piece quite convincing, luring the unsuspecting reader to agree with the author’s basic premises before revealing his shocking conclusions – yet, though a satiric seriousness does pervade the work, a true sincerity and earnestness is at the heart of “A Modest Proposal.”

The Irish Famine of 1740 to 1741 refers to the Irish people, rather than Ireland itself. The island was rich with produce and animals; only the crops (mostly potatoes) of the peasant farmers suffered a poor harvest. The English absentee landlords fed off the abundance of the land and starved the Irish citizens to death. One historian, John Mitchell, remarked, “A million and a half men, women and children were carefully and peacefully slain by the English Government. They died of hunger in the midst of abundance, which their own hands created.” Many people wrote pamphlets to expose the ruthlessness of the English and the desperate state of the Irish or to offer different schemes to ease the poverty of thousands and make them useful to the public. With his own satiric pamphlet, Swift joined these writers, employing the first type of Aristotle’s persuasion, “ethos.” Ethos refers to the credibility of the author. By grouping himself with these other writers, Swift shows that he is embarking on a good cause. In the opening title of his piece, he explains that he wishes to prevent the children of Ireland from being a “burden to their parents” and hopes to make them “beneficial to the public” (“A Modest Proposal,” 1114). Not only, however, does he have England in mind, but he also considers the welfare of the children – with his plan they will not want “food and raiment for the rest of their lives” (1114). He also declares that he wishes to end “voluntary abortions” in which women murder their own children (1115). His reasons for his plan at first appear anything but harmful.

To further support the integrity of his schemes, Swift uses the second type of Aristotelian persuasion, “pathos.” Describing the suffering of the Irish in his opening paragraph, he appeals to human emotion, trying to awaken pity and compassion. He calls it a “melancholy object” to walk through Dublin or travel in the countryside and behold the “beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for alms” (1114). When speaking of the mothers who are forced to murder “the poor innocent babes,” he says it is not for shame, but because they cannot provide for their own children; indeed, the very sight of the starving infants would “move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast” (1115). Yet, in the midst of wringing pity from his audience, Swift suddenly reveals his own scheme for allaying the Irish suffering. He announces,

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout (1114).

Instead of awakening further empathy, his scheme produces disgust. It is this paragraph, however, that makes it readily apparent that Swift’s pamphlet is satiric and he is ridiculing the metaphor, “The English are devouring the Irish.”

Yet, he retains his controlled and grave tone, using the third Aristotelian type of persuasion to support his satire. “Logos” employs logic and outside sources to convince the audience. Swift first appeals to a François Rabelais, a fellow satirist (who he jokingly calls “a grave author” and “eminent French physician”), to prove that his schemes will lessen the Catholic population (1116). Here he parodies the hostility that most English felt against the Papists, especially after the Glorious Revolution that deposed James II and successfully kept Catholics off the throne. Later on in the piece, he also invokes the wisdom of a friend who believes that they might use the children as a substitute for venison meat. Swift casts this plan aside, however, because the meat of older children would probably be tough and lean and some people might think that “such a practice…as a little bordering on cruelty” (1116). The irony of this statement is alarming because Swift’s actual scheme does not simply border on cruelty, but has fallen headfirst into barbarity. Nevertheless, he justifies his friend’s proposal because it was “put into his head by the famous Psalmanazar,” who had written a fictitious book on Formosa and described the selling of plump young girls as food (1117). Swift’s utilization of logos seems to fail with these repulsive examples.

At a deeper level, though, the pamphlet appears to have a very different purpose than offering up Irish children as food for the English. Swift’s Aristotelian persuasion worked perfectly with both ethos and pathos and, at a closer glance, it also works with logos. He convinces the audience of the horrible state of the Irish and the ruthlessness of the English. The English are already devouring the Irish children, already true cannibals. As he draws near the conclusion of his piece, he uses irony to emphasize this, writing that he will not consider other ways to deal with the Irish problem, “of learning to love our country….of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken….of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants” (1118). The pamphlet is a modest proposal for the preservation of a nation on the verge of extermination. He exemplifies his great misery and distress for the Irish people when he tells those who would oppose his schemes to ask the Irish parents,

whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food, at a year old in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes as they have since gone through by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed for ever (1119).

Works Cited:

Swift, Jonathan. “A Modest Proposal.” 1729. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors. Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor. 8th edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006

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