Research Catalog

Title

Writing plague : language and violence from the Black Death to COVID-19 / Alfred Thomas.

Author

Thomas, Alfred, 1958-

Publication

Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2022]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxiv, 265 pages : illustrations (black and white, and colour); 22 cm.

Summary

Writing Plague: Language and Violence from the Black Death to COVID-19 brings a holistic and comparative perspective to plague writing from the later Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. It argues that while the human "hardware" has changed enormously between the medieval past and the present the human "software" has remained remarkably similar across time. Through close readings of works by medieval writers like Guillaume de Machaut, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century, select plays by Shakespeare, and modern plague fiction and film, Alfred Thomas convincingly demonstrates psychological continuities between the Black Death and COVID-19. Thomas highlights the danger of scapegoating vulnerable minority groups such as Asian Americans and Jews in todays America. This wide-ranging study will thus be of interest not only to medievalists but also to students of modernity as well as the general reader.

Series Statement

The new Middle Ages

Uniform Title

New Middle Ages (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm))

Subject

• Literature, Medieval > History and criticism
• Literature, Modern > History and criticism
• Diseases and literature
• Plague in literature
• Epidemics in literature
• Diseases in literature
• Plague > Social aspects
• Epidemics > Social aspects
• Antisemitism
• Violence
• Literature, Medieval
• Literature, Modern

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

1. Introduction: Language and Violence from the Black Death to COVID-19 -- 2. The Pardoner, the Prioress, and the Pandemic: Jews and Other Scapegoats in Fourteenth-Century European Culture -- 3. Death and the Maiden: Mourning and Melancholy in Pearl and the Late Medieval European Elegy -- 4. The Plagues The Thing: Pandemic and Religious Politics in Shakespeares Drama -- 5. The Brown Plague and the White Sickness: Fascism and the Crisis of Democracy in Twentieth-Century Plague Fiction and Film -- 6. Conclusion.

Call Number

JFD 22-2133

ISBN

• 9783030948498
• 3030948498

OCLC

1308471823

Author

Thomas, Alfred, 1958- author.

Title

Writing plague : language and violence from the Black Death to COVID-19 / Alfred Thomas.

Publisher

Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2022]

Type of Content

text

still image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

The new Middle Ages

New Middle Ages (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm))

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Form:

Electronic version: Thomas, Alfred, 1958- Writing plague. Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, 2022 9783030948504 (OCoLC)1312714070

Research Call Number

JFD 22-2133