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Noçon, Peter. "Jonathan Swift, 'The Beasts' Confession to the Priest (1732),'" Teaching Satire: Dryden to Pope, ed. Hermann Josef Real (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1992), pp. 131-165.
Mr. Noçon shows where Swift's "The Beasts' Confession" partially follows the fable pattern from Aesop to La Fontaine and Sir Roger L'Estrange. The most important departure is that the Dean has replaced the ' 'urbane irony' ' of his precursors by vitriolic satire. Swift's fable hinges on paradox. In the...