Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is a satirical mirror that critiques colonialism.

Matthew Arnold’s essay “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time” is a timeless exploration of the role of criticism in intellectual and cultural life. As a Victorian Age critic, Arnold tried to understand the role of criticism amid social, political and other literal changes prevalent in the nineteenth century. What for them is criticism as a process of regulating and striving to perfect the public consciousness of truth, beauty, and culture, he defined as a mode of social activity. Matthew Arnold defines criticism as being “a disinterested endeavour to know and make known the best that is to be known and thought in the world.” He says that by disinterested he wants to stay away from personal views, political opinions, and selfish desire to achieve a goal on the presentation of criticisms. It should be positively biased and not politically aligned, actively striving to objectively rate the literature and ideas as contributing and helpful to one’s mind development. According to ...

  Aldous Huxley’s essay, “The Education of an Amphibian” contains one of the deepest insights into both human beings and their education. In an attempt to combine the two worlds into one, Huxley uses amphibian as a metaphor. He argues that humans, too, inhabit two realms: the tangible world and the abstract world. From this, he thinks that there appear two sides which mould how we view education. Huxley laments what he perceives as a deficiency of social education systems to impart the essential components of the human spirit, feeling and worth rather giving much attention to the mind, the hands, and the heart. He points out that this produces people who are more skilled in books but weak inside, who may have no endurance to build satisfying personalities. Education, according to Huxley , should foster a complete man, or in this case, an amphibian, by aiming at the physical and metaphysical charactery of life. In addition, the idea of self-awareness is at the heart of this essa...

  John Ruskin essay “Of Books” is a powerful argument regarding how valuable and important reading is to be granted wisdom, and to be given lessons on how to live. Ruskin provides a clear message about the significance of books and a proper attitude to them. His essay remains a useful guideline, enshrines the value of literature for the intention of improving the knowledge of students as well as their spirits. In addition, Ruskin divides books into two categories: between the “books of the hour” and the “books of all time” The former may be shallow, quickly passed, and likely to be forgotten; they may amuse society but to no avail. The former can be interpreted as sensational publications, which present information that may be trivial but are not particularly valuable or beneficial; on the contrary, the latter contain knowledge that can be helpful at any period in human history and which teach moral values. According to Ruskin, people should read the handful ”books of all time” as...

 The essay, “ What I Believe” is basically E.M Foster's idea of a world which is based on the principles of individualism, tolerance, and democracy. He argues against institutionalised structures of the society as well as political and religious institutions, while supporting ideas of individual conscience of people and interpersonal communication. It is remarkable, while Forster’s ideas remain rather   remain more relevant in today's modern world, especially, these values as the freedom of an individual and social justice. One of the principal concepts of What I Believe is the critique of Forster to the concepts of monocausal conformism, particularly religious and conventional morality. He despises dogmatism of conventional religious systems of governance that thrust pre-established doctrines onto people. However, Forster believes in the opinion that everyone can believe whatever he wants for no one has the right to define the limitations of knowledge as long as the actions ...

By the time Swift was writing this prose Ireland was so completely dominated by England, the colonising  giant whose brutal and oppressive legacy continues to echo across regions, including our own in the Subcontinent, where we still bear the scars of imperial subjugation. The difference is that we did not had any literary figures like Jonathan Swift who could propose a more ‘modest’ solution to our predicament ( which might have been even harsher than his).The Irish people were at the brink of extinction, according to estimates, more than half of Ireland’s population was fleeing to other countries for the sake of survival. Swift’s use of satire to describe the situation in Ireland manifests the inhumane side of colonisation being practiced in their country, where the people were left with no choice but to sell their infants to the colonisers as food. The helplessness of the Irish was so severe that they had nothing left but their children because of the massive economic disparitie...