ABSTRACT
The distinguishing quality of Impersonal Irony is the absence of the ironist as a person; authors have only his words. If they ask what Swift's basic strategy is in this work, three or four answers seem possible. The title suggests that they should regard it as Pretended Advice: Swift is advising the Irish, and the Anglo-Irish in particular, to eat the children of the poor. Since a Dramatizing Ironist presents ironic situations which he sees and feels as ironic it is proper that they ask here what is meant by a sense of irony. The form in which the author have presented this particular example reveals an occult resemblance, but it is a resemblance that implies an incompatibility that between the clergyman's behaviour and his situation (in the eyes of the atheist).
