29. A Modest Proposal, Last Week Tonight, and The Onion
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English - February 03, 2021 13:00 - 1 hour - 61.2 MB - ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsSociety & Culture Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
In this episode, returning guest, Gretchen Pineo and I discuss satire in Jonathan Swift's 1729 essay, "A Modest Proposal." We draw parallels between the delivery of the serious message through the guise of satire in both Swift's work and John Oliver's show Last Week Tonight. We also consider the absurdist aspects of A Modest Proposal as satire in print with the absurdist elements of articles found in The Onion.
For this episode we utilized the Norton Anthology World Literature, Volume D, 4th edition.
Additional resources include:
The Humor Code, by Peter McGraw and Joel Warner
"Jonathan Swift in 1729 Mentions the Weight of an Infant at Birth and at a Year of Age" by T.E.C. https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/48/1/122
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Music: Fugue in C# Major, from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1": J.S. Bach
Music Synthesizer and Programming: Shawn P. Russell
Sound Consultant and Mixing: Shawn P. Russell
Recording and Editing: Rebecca L. Salois