Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is a satirical essay from the neoclassical era. It sought to call out the upper class by proposing crazy ideas like selling poor babies and eating them to get rich. Swift does everything he can to justify doing insane things like this saying it'll help society and the poor.
METAFICTION AND MAGICAL REALISM
Postmodern writers didn't seem to like linear storytelling, so they make it very clear that they were fiction while still having a connection to the real world. They often had characters that knew they were in a fake world. Swift's satire is full of metafiction like this, specifically magical realism. Magical realism is a subcategory of metafiction that combines normal, everyday life with crazy surreal events. This is exactly what Swift does in "A Modest Proposal." He presents an irrational solution to a very real poverty problem in Ireland by suggesting poor families should sell their kids as food for the rich. Swift presents this is a serious manner that makes the reader question the reality of the situation and expose the horrible attitudes of the upper class to the lower. To add more metafiction into the mix, he progressively makes the lines between real