Canceled: Debating Women: Arguments in Verse (Two Parts)

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) and Alexander Pope (1688-1744) were two of the most important British authors in the early 18th century, known especially for  their satires, a literary form that uses humor to critique vice or folly. Swift is the author of Gulliver’s Travels and the infamous essay “A Modest Proposal,” in which he proposed that the poor in Ireland should eat their children to survive the potato famine; Pope authored the mock-epic “The Rape of the Lock” and the poems “An Essay on Criticism” and “An Essay on Man.”  

Recent generations of readers and scholars have characterized Swift and Pope as misogynists, as women were often targets of their satiric wit. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) and Anne Ingram, Viscountess Irwin (1696-1764), wrote poems mimicking the men’s forms and refuting their critiques, one with sharp humor and the other with powerfully logical argumentation. 

Alix Wee, PhD,  has a doctorate in English from the University of Minnesota in 2004, specializing in British literature from the Victorian and Modernist periods.

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