Abstract
Satire, as defined by Bennett and Royle, is "the humorous presentation of human folly or vice in such a way as to make it look ridiculous" . It generally retains the appearance of rigorous logic, buttresses premises and arguments supported by formally correct proofs and eventually leads the reader to a conclusion of outlandish impossibility or striking absurdity. "True satire", writes G. K. Chesterton "is always, so to speak, a variation or fantasia upon the air of pure logic" . In A Modest Proposal, this fantasia lies in the extraordinary discrepancy between an apparently coherent, authoritative and benevolent discourse - whose logic the reader is initially prompt to endorse - and the effect of monstrous absurdity that it unexpectedly produces as the reader becomes aware of its real implications. If laughter is the result, the satirist, however, uses the logic of rhetoric in a manner different from that employed by the humorist, as his aim is to produce laughter directed at something : i.e. at the ridicule of a situation reflecting by contrast a set of powerful understatements.
