From "Laughing" to "Rayl[ing]" with a "Few Friends": A Modest Proposal as Private Satire

This essay accounts for Jonathan Swift's 1734 revision of his theory of satire in Intelligencer No. 3 (1728) through a reinterpretation of A Modest Proposal (1729) as a source of interpersonal raillery. In Intelligencer No. 3, Swift writes that the only reward he seeks in writing satire is to "Laugh with a few Friends in a Corner." By 1734, this modest desire is out of reach. A seemingly defeated Swift writes to his English friend Edward Harley, second Earl of Oxford, that he "ha[s] nothing left to do but rayl with a very few friends in a safe corner of the house." This essay offers a reading of a series of letters from two of Swift's English friends on the London publication of A Modest Proposal as a motivating context for the shift from "Laugh[ing]" to "rayl[ing]" in Swift's satiric theory. Allen Bathurst, first Earl of Bathurst, and Edward Harley translate A Modest Proposal's argument from an Irish to an English context and transform it into a private satire, which serves primarily to enhance the interpersonal raillery of their letters to Swift. Using translation as a metaphor to figure the formal patterns of movement and exchange posited in Swift's published theories of satire, this essay illustrates how Swift uses his revision to distance himself from his English friends and to align himself and his satiric theory with Ireland and his Irish friends.