Essays on A Modest Proposal

When many people think of satire, they understand that it is a subversive approach to a certain social or political issue through the use of irony. Works like the Earl of Rochester’s “A Satire Against Reason and Mankind,” Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal or John Dryden’s MacFlecknoe all make fun of some perceived failing of its audience, whether it be the “Satire’s poking fun at rationalism and reason, Swift’s pointing out of the problems facing Ireland as a result of English ignorance, or Dryden’s ridiculing of his contemporaries’ inadequate literary criticism. However, to

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Annotated Bibliography

Bohn, William E. “The Development of John Dryden’s Literary Criticism.” PMLA 22.1
(1907): 56-139.
In Bohn’s article, the author discusses Dryden’s critical essays, particularly in terms of his use of satire. Here, Bohn notes the way in which Dryden used a satire as its own form of criticism; “satire is itself but a sort of criticism; it has always been the form assumed by the highly trained, versifying prose-understanding” (118). Dryden was never one to give literary judgments one at a time, but rather to convey his ideas in a more abstract way, which is

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