Swift's “Project”: Tract or Travesty?

In a recent article, “Swift's Project: A Religious and Political Satire” (PMLA, LXXII, March 1967, 54–63), Leland D. Peterson argues that Swift's Project for the Advancement of Religion, and the Reformation of Manners (1709) cannot be taken as a serious “reformation tract.” In his view, what Swift appears to be recommending in the Project is as outrageous in its own way as his more famous project in A Modest Proposal and we must therefore assume that in the earlier piece, as in the later, Swift's pose is ironic, his persona unsympathetic, and his purpose satirical. Peterson concludes by suggesting that “the main targets of satire in the Project are reformers and reforming societies, projectors, nominal Christianity, and the Whig Junto” (p. 58).