Plagues occurred several times in history and were also often described in literary contexts. In his essay, the author addresses these issues, exploring in particular the question of what ancient texts can still tell us today in terms of responses to the current pandemic.
This chapter examines the way in which fictional accounts of plague can tell us much about human experience of a pandemic. Examining the inter-relationship between Albert Camus's 1947 novel The Plague and the blues song ‘St James Infirmary’, the chapter explores the way in these texts meaningfully engage with human emotions and help people deal with encounters with plague. The chapter reiterates the importance of arts and culture in everyday life and examines the new creative ways of thinking about the arts and culture as they illuminate and reflect on the spread and proliferation of viruses.
This chapter explores the social and spatial ramifications of plague in early modern towns and cities, with special reference to intoxicants and intoxicating spaces. Focussing on the cases of Amsterdam, Hamburg, London, and Stockholm –all of which experienced multiple ‘visitations’ during the so-called second plague pandemic – it explores the implications of disease with no cure for the use and governance of urban spaces (especially those designed for sociability, such as alehouses and coffeehouses), and considers the role of intoxicants both old and new in medical repertoires.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic faded in early 2022, the agenda has been overtaken by other major issues, such as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and this has led to a certain tiredness if not bare repression of the pandemic experience. However, we believe it is important to revisit the cultural experience of the pandemic not only to reflect on how it challenged us and our societies but also to point out alternatives that are still relevant now, even if other problems have occurred (see figure 12.1). In fact, the very experience of the pandemic as a hyperobject might be worth reflecting on, as we will attempt to do below, in order to understand and deal with other continuing hyperobject crises such as racism, inequality and climate destruction (Morton 2013). Our focus in the following will be on our research on electronic literature, digital artists and the pandemic, which we will present below, including a focus on our chosen work by the artist Ben Grosser The Endless Doomscroller, which will be put in relation to other works from our exhibition, collection and documentary.
This chapter explores how people deal with the pandemic today. For the purpose of the analysis, a perceptual-linguistic perspective was adopted using methodological tools proposed by cognitive linguistics. The general thesis assumes that when faced with a new experience, humans need to give it meaning, and the way they do that is expressed in language. Selected language structures appearing in the Polish media during the pandemic (2020-2021) were analysed. From the perceptual point of view, how the pandemic was framed launched a category related to the medical domain, which in turn triggered a sense of agency and responsibility, and not – as before – external control, understood as delegating responsibility to gods or higher forces.
This chapter provides an introduction to the edited collection, exploring the relationship between plague and the humanities through time. The chapter draws on the Hittite tablets ‘Plague Prayers’ to explore the social, metaphorical and political impact of pandemics on humanity. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the structure of the book and a description of individual chapters.
The paper is about the COVID-19 discourse in the mainstream news portals in Lithuania presented as a critical review of contradicting approaches that developed together with the chronology of the events. It is supplemented by the linguistic analyses of the discourse, concentrated on its semantics, especially disrupted use of abstract notions.
This chapter serves as a conclusion to the volume, summarizing the findings from the individual chapters. It also argues that the humanities, often misunderstood as “soft science” or as being limited to theoretical deliberations, can address not only philosophical questions but also the global challenges of our time.
This article compares two first-hand accounts of the plague in London in the early and mid-seventeenth century, those of Thomas Dekker, “The Wonderful Year, 1603” and Nathaniel Hodges, ‘Loimologia, or, an historical Account of the Plague in London in 1665”, with the aim of understanding how, within a two-generation gap, two Londoners described the plague and its consequences. It is set in the political and intellectual context of the contemporary literature on the plague, in particular that of the treatises published in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century.
