Plague Year Research Articles

Communities in Western Classical Plague Literature

The portrayal of communities in plague literature has become a focal point of post-pandemic literary studies. The Decameron, A Journal of the Plague Year, and The Plague are seminal Western plague literary works set against the backdrop of plagues in the 14th, 17th, and 20th centuries, respectively, each reflecting different paradigms of community shaped by their respective eras. During the Renaissance, humanism was prevalent, which influenced Boccaccio's The Decameron to depict communities grounded in a sense of human compassion. In the 17th century, with the rapid development of capitalism in England, Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year portrays the impact of capitalist expansion on various communities during the Great Plague of London. The devastation of World War II brought significant upheaval to humanity, and the absurdity of modern society presented both challenges and opportunities for the communities in Camus' The Plague. These communities not only reflect the diversity of social life in different eras of Western society but also offer insights and lessons for fostering harmony in contemporary human society and building a shared future for humanity on a global scale.

Book Review: Psychoanalysis in a Plague Year

Book Review: Psychoanalysis in a Plague Year

COVID-19 and the Book Market. Fleeting Phenomena and Lasting Changes

The article presents selected issues related to the antiquarian book market in Poland during the pandemic. The first part shows the increased interest in three titles of world prose with epidemic themes (A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe, The Plague by Albert Camus, and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez). Demand for these titles increased significantly, as did their prices, although these depended on market opportunities. However, interest in these titles waned over time. However, the changes in the antiquarian auction market, which had already moved entirely online as a result of the pandemic, proved to be permanent. Meanwhile, the Internet has allowed new sellers and buyers to enter the market, although the top position of the industry has not changed.

Tsering Woeser’s “Notes from a Plague Year,” Translated by Ian Boyden

Tsering Woeser’s “Notes from a Plague Year,” Translated by Ian Boyden

Slow Disasters and Adaptive Archiving

The Journal of the Plague Year: A COVID-19 Archive (JOTPY) is a digital, crowdsourced archive collecting pandemic stories from around the globe. It encourages students and the public to submit stories of personal experiences during the pandemic. The project builds on the rich work of rapid-response archives in museum studies, oral history, anthropology, and disaster studies. JOTPY reconceptualizes the COVID-19 pandemic as a “slow disaster”: not a singular crisis, but an ongoing calamity provoked by deep historical, sociopolitical, and cultural processes that COVID-19 both reflects and highlights. In order to address the challenges of documenting a slow disaster, we propose employing the rolling-response archive model. We argue that the current pandemic has changed our understanding of crises and of how to document them ethically and equitably.

『전염병 일지』 혼종 서사 문체 번역의 고려사항들

Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year has long been recognized as a hybrid narrative that intertwines history and fiction, merging empirical evidence with evaluative interpretations. This paper posits that the hybrid narrative style utilized in the text serves the author's intention to achieve specific humanitarian narrative objectives: employing empirical evidence to enlighten readers and guide them towards interventionist actions. Furthermore, this study conducts an analysis of the stylistic elements within the work that embody this narrative orientation. Emphasis is placed on the author's deliberate choices in vocabulary, the use of pronouns, and shifts in tense. I argue that these stylistic components play important roles in bringing the central theme of the text to life and, therefore, warrant careful consideration in translation into Korean. Lastly, this research examines three published Korean translations of A Journal of the Plague Year to evaluate how effectively they capture these stylistic features in the source language and convey them in the target language.

Animation, Adaptation, and the Plague

Abstract This article offers the most sustained critical assessment to date of The Periwig-Maker (1999), a short-animated film that takes on the formidable challenge of adapting Daniel Defoe’s novel A Journal of the Plague Year (1722). After embedding both film and novel in intertextual webs that far exceed their putative relationship to each other, the article explores in detail two of the ways in which The Periwig-Maker transmutes its adapted text: first, its complex sound design, instantiating the plague’s soundscape that can only be faintly intimated in Defoe’s print-bound work; second, its gothic mode, hyperbolizing what is only one of a wide array of generic options followed in the Journal. The final section of the article extends the afterlives of both film and novel by considering them as fictions that, eerily, not only look backwards to the plague in the seventeenth century but forward to our own experience of deadly pandemic with COVID-19.

Ramadan in the plague year: Indonesian Muslim responses to the onset of COVID-19

Ramadan in the plague year: Indonesian Muslim responses to the onset of COVID-19

Exploring Interactivity in Digital Comics

The digital revolution has reconditioned our media landscape, instigating hybridity in traditional forms and reshaping the nature of storytelling through enhanced interactivity. This paper scrutinizes the transformative interplay of digital technologies and comic books, engendering new media narrative forms such as interactive comics and redefining conventional sequential storytelling. As a reflection of this evolution, comic books, long recognized as sequential art, have broadened their narrative scope by integrating elements of motion, interactivity, and game-like attributes. This research explores four distinct types of digital comics: Meanwhile: An Interactive Comic Book (Zarfhome Software, 2018), Framed (Noodlecake Studios, 2014), Florence (Mountains Studio, 2018), and Our Plague Year (Burton, 2022). By adopting Sheldon’s categories of interactivity and Lebowitz and Klug's interactive story spectrum, we analyze these stories' levels of interactivity and linearity. The findings indicate that the complexity, diversity, and multitude of reader agency do not necessarily render a story interactive in terms of content. While these digital comics vary significantly in design, most still adhere to a traditional linear narrative framework despite the diversity and many interactive elements. Only “Meanwhile: An Interactive Comic Book” deviates from linearity, manifesting non-linear, web-like narrative structures and branching story paths. This analysis unravels the nuanced hybridization of digital media and comic books, illuminating how digital technologies reshape and augment our narrative practices. The digital revolution has not only brought about a new storytelling habitat but also expanded our understanding of co-authorship, thus pushing the boundaries of sequential storytelling in an ever-evolving digital culture. It also highlights the importance of recognizing the differences between interacting with the medium and interacting with the story itself. Consequently, this research contributes to the understanding of the intricate relationship between digital technologies, interactivity, and sequential storytelling, paving the way for further exploration in the field of digital comics.

“Indeed Strangely Altered”

Abstract Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year documents the cultural changes that the plague brings about in London. The COVID-19 pandemic similarly brought about dramatic cultural changes, and it changed the way that faculty taught. This article argues that faculty were forced to rethink what they teach, why they teach, and how they teach, and English departments and departments across higher education can serve students better if they retain the lessons that learned in the post-pandemic context.

On Metapragmatic Gaslighting: Truth and Trump’s Epistemic Tactics in a Plague Year

On Metapragmatic Gaslighting: Truth and Trump’s Epistemic Tactics in a Plague Year

Surviving the Years of Plague: Two Feminist Academics’ Interrupted Reading of Raewyn Connell’s The Good University

Surviving the Years of Plague: Two Feminist Academics’ Interrupted Reading of Raewyn Connell’s The Good University

Affective Profit

Affective Profit

The gendered dimensions of London’s last bubonic plague epidemic 1665–1666

ABSTRACT There was a female bias in deaths during metropolitan London’s last epidemic of bubonic plague. This was unusual for the period and place, for on an annual basis, male deaths typically exceeded female deaths, a pattern that included prior plague years. This study examines this gender bias in mortality during the 1665–1666 epidemic through statistical analyses and a review of prior studies. Analyses of mortality data obtained from the London Bills of Mortality for the epidemic and the period reveal how unlikely female deaths exceeding male deaths was for early modern London. The historical studies are consulted to gain insights into insights into differential exposure to the disease based on gender. Greater female vulnerability accounts for the anomalous parity of female and male deaths. Increased deaths from childbed during the plague year drove the convergence of female and male deaths, and plague was likely a contributing factor in these deaths. Moreover, gendered divisions of labour based on the types of livelihoods afforded women compared to men, as well as the tasks assigned to recipients of public relief during the epidemic, resulted in greater exposure of women to plague. These drove up the proportion of female deaths during the plague year.

Pandemic in Potosí: Fear, Loathing, and Public Piety in a Colonial Mining Metropolis

In Pandemic in Potosí, Kris Lane artfully assembles and interprets primary sources on a topic both far removed in time and space from modern libraries and classrooms and yet immediately relevant: social responses to pandemic disease. Any concerns over the rigor of so timely a publication are quickly dispelled by Lane's engaging and thorough analysis and the clear significance of the primary sources that make up the majority of the text. The book is Lane's second contribution to the Latin American Originals series by Pennsylvania State University Press, in which highly qualified scholars translate, transcribe, and interpret primary sources from colonial Latin America for an audience ranging from students to scholars. Lane succeeds in this ambitious task, compiling an accessible text that scholars and students alike will appreciate.In the preface, Lane raises the central question: How did societies without our modern medical and scientific capacities respond to pandemics? In the case of the deadly pandemic that ravaged Potosí from 1719 to 1722, a baroque religiosity shaped the answer for various groups: for chroniclers who lamented moral corruption that provoked divine wrath, for priests and other religious communities who became the first responders, and for the sick who placed their hope in Catholic ritual and saintly intercession. Yet, as Lane points out, comparison with other pandemics reveals common conflicts relevant far beyond the eighteenth-century Andes: between isolation and openness, between moral corruption and integrity, between class solidarity and division, between public health measures and false remedies, and between cosmic and natural causes. These tensions frame the primary sources and analysis that follow.In his introduction, Lane provides the context for the central primary sources, the longest of which is an excerpt from the voluminous History of the Imperial Villa of Potosí detailing the plague years by chronicler Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela. This section once again reaches a broad audience as Lane demonstrates both restraint in the number of citations and a comprehensive grasp of the relevant literature. Highlights include his brief introduction to the mita labor system—then a major point of contention between the crown and mining interests—and his discussion of contemporary European responses to plague in France and Spain that facilitated efforts to expand state power. In another section, Lane points out how the mixture of religious belief and humoral medicine contributed to the scapegoating of various groups in Europe—Jews, Roma, and (in Catholic countries) women. Chroniclers and officials blamed the plague on social and moral disorder that challenged “natural hierarchies,” “‘derang[ing]’ both the individual body and the body politic” (p. 23). The introduction neatly frames the sources that follow while gesturing toward areas of interest for scholars in related fields.The remainder of the text consists of Lane's transcription of various primary sources that illustrate the worldview described by Lane and that provide often-colorful anecdotes of this difficult time in Potosí. The themes of immorality and vice as root causes are borne out particularly well. While Arzáns's treatment of the pandemic is the central primary source in Pandemic in Potosí, Lane includes excerpts from other sources describing the pandemic in Cuzco and Arequipa as well as discussion from two medical experts detailing symptoms and recommending treatments. Lane's transcription and translation introduces the uninitiated into the language, style, and worldview of the time and provides insight that is of use to scholars interested in common themes.If there is one problem with this text, it is that some of its intended audience may be tempted to focus merely on Lane's detailed introduction rather than on the primary sources themselves. It would be difficult, however, to blame the faults of some potential readers on the author. Given the goal of creating an accessible text for a varied audience, Lane succeeds, even if his description of the narrative undercuts its conclusion. Nevertheless, this book provides something of interest for scholars and experts, and uses the lens of a pandemic, a cultural touchstone for the current generation of students, to introduce them to eighteenth-century Potosí.

London parochial burial records from 1563 to 1665 indicate higher plague death rates for males than females: Some possible demographic and social explanations.

The burial rates of males and females in early modern central London were compared to investigate a possible bias towards male mortality in the plague years of 1563, 1593, 1603, 1625 and 1665. The burial records of sixteen parishes were examined and compared with the five-year periods immediately preceding each plague year when recorded burials were substantially less. A markedly higher burial rate for males was detected in each plague year but this can be partly attributed to a general preponderance of males in the central London population since there was a similar but lesser bias in non-plague years. In the plague years the difference between the frequency of male and female adult burials appears to have been enhanced by the preferential migration of women of childbearing age out of the city since fewer births were recorded in months when plague was rife. Furthermore, when a sample of households was investigated, husbands were significantly more likely to have been buried than their wives. These findings were largely applicable to the plague years of 1603, 1625 and 1665 but were far less apparent in 1563 and 1593. In general, there were more burials of boys than girls in non-plague years which is the expected consequence of their greater vulnerability to childhood diseases. This difference diminished in plague years so that the burials of girls and boys approached parity at a time when burials of children of both sexes were significantly increased. Possibly, plague did not discriminate between the sexes and this characteristic tended to mask the usual vulnerability of boys.

The authorship of George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield

Abstract Establishing the authorship of George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield can be seen within the wider context of detecting a collaborative or single-authored canon of early Shakespeare plays which, perhaps, he did not want to see as part of his dramatic work if we are to trust Heminges’ and Condell’s references to ‘surrepetitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious imposters, that expos’d them’ (First Folio preface). The fact that the remaining plays of the First Folio [are] ‘absolute in their numbers as he [Shakespeare] conceived them,’ has in some way a ring of self-amputation. The conclusion of the present study, based on the acknowledged methodological advances in non-traditional stylometric tools, contained in the R Stylo suite, is that George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield was originally written by William Shakespeare, even though the play may have been shortened for performances outside London with a reduced company of players during the plague years of 1592 and 1593.

Pandemic diaries under the lens

Diaries belong to a unique kind of literature—part memoir, part personal memories, and in the long run also part of history. Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl jolted the world by giving an insider perspective of the Holocaust. Conversations With Myself gave humankind a glimpse into apartheid through Nelson Mandela's experience. And Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year dipped many of us into what it was like to live during the 17th century Great Plague in the city of London. Nearly three centuries later, COVID-19 set the stage alike for established and amateur writers on social media platforms and the birth of tonnes of diaries wherein people from around the world shared their lockdown experiences. This is a massive, uncalled for social experiment, for sociologists and those who specialise in modern media like Guobin Yang (University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA) now have access to interactive diaries on social networks. This is a treasure trove of data, with the authors’ stories, readers’ comments, rants, fights, and online trolls all giving people like Yang material to explore what made people write pandemic diaries, what came out of it, and what they say about humankind's take on the ongoing pandemic, its politics, and peoples’ opinions on pandemic management by different governments.

Pandemic Response: A Reflection on Disease and Education

Pandemic Response: A Reflection on Disease and Education

Plague: A Tragic Way to Empower the Artistic Imagination and to Deliver Hope

This paper examines the impacts of the plagues in dramatic literature and performance art beginning with ancient Greek Theatre and ending in Contemporary Theatre. It addresses the traditional application of the metaphorical employment of the plagues and a shift towards the pronunciation of the space in Contemporary Theatre. This research exposes the existential concerns that threaten humanity, such as fascism, marginalization, and the catastrophic consequences of climate change. To clarify the main argument, the classical and modern texts, along with the opinions of legendary theater theoreticians, directors, and artists, are examined. These sources range from Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, Albert Camus’ The Plague, and Ann Bogart, to Robert Wilson. These existential concerns, along with possible artistic responses to the current problems of climate change and COVID-19, inspired them to start a discussion through more ecologically concerned theater practices.