Swift, A Modest Proposal (1729): “a young healthy child... is... a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food.” What is the passage really arguing?

Swift, A Modest Proposal (1729): “landlords... have already devoured most of the parents.” What does the line mean beneath its literal image?

Franklin, “Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One” (1773): “a great Empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.” What is meant?

Franklin, “An Edict by the King of Prussia” (1773): Prussia “shall be levied and paid” duties on British trade. What is Franklin really attacking?

Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813): “a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” What is the ironic meaning?

Austen, Northanger Abbey (1818): Catherine's mother, “instead of dying... still lived on.” What does the joke really mean?

Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895): “Divorces are made in Heaven.” What is the line doing?

Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911): “CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are.” What is really meant?

Twain, “Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences” (1895): “Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.” What does Twain mean?

Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (1852): “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” What is meant?

Swift's proposer says in A Modest Proposal (1729), “I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts.” Which cue most clearly marks satire?

Swift, A Modest Proposal (1729): children are called “saleable commodity” and mothers “breeders.” Which cue exposes the satire?

Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911): “EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.” Which cue creates the irony?

Twain, “On the Decay of the Art of Lying” (1880): “the Lie, as a Virtue... is eternal.” Which textual cue signals satire?

Franklin, “Rules...” (1773): if good governors attach colonies, “You are therefore to be careful” and send ruined gamblers. What cue reveals satire?

Austen, Northanger Abbey (1818): Catherine's chaperone, Mrs. Allen, “had neither beauty, genius, accomplishment, nor manner.” Which cue marks parody?

Wilde, Earnest (1895): “women... flirt with their own husbands... is perfectly scandalous.” Which cue shows comic irony?

Douglass, “Fourth of July?” (1852): calling celebration “inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony” after imagining “a man in fetters” signals what?

Twain, “Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences” (1895): characters should be “alive, except in the case of corpses.” What cue creates the satirical jab?

Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911): “PEACE, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.” What cue marks the satire?

Swift, A Modest Proposal (1729), rejects “other expedients” like “taxing our absentees.” What does this indirect stance accomplish?

Swift, A Modest Proposal (1729): the motive is “the publick good... relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich.” What is the effect?

Franklin's “Edict by the King of Prussia” (1773) pretends Britain is Prussia's colony. What effect does that point of view create?

Twain, “On the Decay of the Art of Lying” (1880): “Joking aside, I think there is much need of wise examination...” What does the turn accomplish?

Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813): “a truth universally acknowledged” opens a marriage plot. What does the ironic stance accomplish?

Wilde, Earnest (1895): “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” What is the effect of the paradox?

Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911): “LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.” What does the satirical definition accomplish?

Douglass, “Fourth of July?” (1852): “your boasted liberty... your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery.” What is the effect of “your”?

Austen, Northanger Abbey (1818): Catherine faces “all the difficulties and dangers of a six weeks' residence in Bath.” What does the mock-serious exaggeration accomplish?

Twain, “Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences” (1895): Cooper scores “114 offences... out of a possible 115.” What does the hyperbole accomplish?