데커의 팸플릿에 재현된 ‘카멜레온 같은’ 역병

Abstract

This paper explores Thomas Dekker’s plague pamphlets, especially The Wonderful Year as compared to other contemporary plague discourses. Unlike writers of religious or medical treatises on the plague, who invariably interpret the disease as God’s scourge for human transgressions, Dekker represents it as inscrutable, as being “Chameleon-like,” in that it is outrageously random in the selection of its victims, and its affliction is unfathomable for the living within the “charnel-house” that the city was converted to. His reportage-style depiction of the utter terror of the plague leads him to conclude that dogmatic sermons and preposterous health advice are not efficacious in the relief of the agony from the devastating epidemic. Dekker, instead, offers narratives of dreadful experiences rendered delectable as an agent of consolation for the survivors. He suggests that the memory rehearsal of the past plague outbreaks helps people cope with its trauma by making them culturally accommodated to the disease. Through the sundry tales at the end of The Wonderful Year, Dekker demonstrates that mirth and laughter from the stories can be “wholesome against the plague” as he has proclaimed in the dedication.