Linda Clark and Carole Rawcliffe,The Fifteenth Century XII: Society in an Age of Plague

Abstract

The most recent volume of The Fifteenth Century, a compilation of ten papers given at the Fifteenth Century Conference of 2011, carries the thematic subtitle ‘Society in an Age of Plague’. This is an apt description, for while the work is bookended by two plague studies, the intervening eight studies examine a variety of topics related to urban life in the fifteenth century. In five of these studies, plague is a peripheral player, forever lurking on the edges of life but not always intruding directly on the subjects being studied (Smyth, Sweetinburgh, Rutledge, Sagui, Brenner). In the remaining three essays, the authors examine the threat of and response to plague more directly (Murphy, Stevens Crawshaw, Henderson). In addition, the essays included in this volume offer moderately broad geographic coverage: four on England (including two specifically on Norwich), two on Rouen and two on Italian cities (Stevens Crawshaw on Milan, Venice and Ragusa and Henderson on Florence).