The Restoration

1. The Glorious (Bloodless) Revolution is when King James II and his family were pressured into fleeing England by a union of Parliamentarians after James II, a Roman Catholic, had inherited the throne from his brother King Charles II. King Charles II was one of the Stuarts and he had reestablished the Church of England as the official church while he was alive. After King James II fled, England was ruled by his Protestant daughter, Mary and her husband William of Orange.
I think this event was so important because it was the first time in a long time that control of the country shifted from Protestant to Catholic without somebody being beheaded. It has ensured that, ever since, the rulers of England have all been Anglicans. Another important result is that since the new king, King William of Orange was part of the Dutch Reformed faith and not the Church of England, the Parliament passed the Act of Toleration of 1689, which granted toleration to nonconformist Protestants, although not to Catholics. Another major effect of King James II being pressured to flee to France is that ever since, the power of the Parliament has increased and the power of the Monarchy has decreased in England.

2. A satire is a literary work or a work of art that pokes fun at or criticizes something by using irony. Some examples are the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and Scary Movie.

3. I was a little surprised when he started talking about eating babies. The author seems to have planned the situation all out. He's even got all the statistical information calculated. The tone he uses is very sincere and believable, making it even more disturbing to think about. The arguement is well organized and laid out by the narrator, making it sound very rational.

This work is a satire because Jonnathon Swift is using irony the whole time (the proposal in reality is completely unacceptable but for the narrator is completely acceptable) to criticize and ridicule the inhumaneness of landlords and economists at the time.

4. I didn't really like this account of the black plague very much. I thought it was too unattached and impersonal, and I didn't like the dry style of writing used. It was hard for me to get into the reading and it took me a long time to read even though this is a pretty short work. The narrator of the journal writes: "This may serve a little to describe the dreadful condition of that day, though it is impossible to say anything that is able to give a true idea of it to those who did not see it, other than this, that it was indeed very, very, very dreadful, and such as no tongue can express."- but he never really seems to be very disturbed by the events, or at least the tone never really changes from that of a reporter. I would've been more interesting to me if it sounded more like a personal experience, although it is very detailed. It would've been better if more of it was written like the poem at the end:
"A dreadful plague in London was
In the year sixty-five,
Which swept an hundred thousand souls
Away; yet I alive!"

5. I think for the common people living in England at the time, the most important thing would be staying alive and trying to enjoy life. The plague of London of 1665 wiped out a huge number of people, and the Great Fire of London destroyed most of the houses in the city, so at this time, people were trying to regroup and restore their livelihoods. Jonathan Swift writes of the "present deplorable state of the kingdom" in A Modest Proposal and describes the large number of beggars there were: "It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes."

However, for the upper classes, the most important think might have been knowledge, since it was the Age of Reason. More and more people in the upper classes were reading because more and more authors, such as Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift, were using prose. Prose is more direct and to the point than poetry and usually describes how things happen more than asking why they happen like Shakespeare often did in the Renaissance period of literature.