![]() The Pretender: The Pretender, mentioned twice, is James Francis Edward Stuart, the son of the recently deposed King James II.The Proposer is apparently unaware of this development, and writes that the “very worthy person” got his ideas from Psalmanazar. By the time A Modest Proposal was written, Psalmanazar had been exposed as a fraud. He was a French literary imposter who claimed to be a native of Taiwan (then called “Formosa”) and wrote a made-up account of his travels. ![]() George Psalmanazar: Psalmanazar is, in fact, a historical figure.He is a fastidious but entirely deluded planner, whose grand designs for the improvement of Irish society fail to take into account the most basic assumptions of human decency and morality. The Proposer appears to be a wealthy, highly educated, Protestant Englishman with little regard for the humanity of Ireland’s Catholic poor. ![]() Rather, he is an exaggerated persona meant to represent a class of people whom Swift especially disdained.
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