Political arithmetik: accounting for irony in Swift's "A Modest Proposal"

Abstract

Writing as a literary critic and literary historian rather than as a professional or academic accountant, Phiddian proposes to highlight two ways by which accountants might resist the rhetorical power of positive accounting theory to give the impression that it operates with scientific neutrality. First, by attending to satirical modes of writing that use parody to unsettle the assumptions of accounting discourse; secondly, by adopting and illustrating a sceptical mode of interpretation based on a model of blindness and insight very commonly employed in current literary theory.