Plague Writing in Early Modern England

Plague Writing in Early Modern England
Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Total Pages : 309
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780226294117
ISBN-13 : 0226294110
Rating : 4/5 (110 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Plague Writing in Early Modern England by : Ernest B. Gilman

Download or read book Plague Writing in Early Modern England written by Ernest B. Gilman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the seventeenth century, England was beset by three epidemics of the bubonic plague, each outbreak claiming between a quarter and a third of the population of London and other urban centers. Surveying a wide range of responses to these epidemics—sermons, medical tracts, pious exhortations, satirical pamphlets, and political commentary—Plague Writing in Early Modern England brings to life the many and complex ways Londoners made sense of such unspeakable devastation. Ernest B. Gilman argues that the plague writing of the period attempted unsuccessfully to rationalize the catastrophic and that its failure to account for the plague as an instrument of divine justice fundamentally threatened the core of Christian belief. Gilman also trains his critical eye on the works of Jonson, Donne, Pepys, and Defoe, which, he posits, can be more fully understood when put into the context of this century-long project to “write out” the plague. Ultimately, Plague Writing in Early Modern England is more than a compendium of artifacts of a bygone era; it holds up a distant mirror to reflect our own condition in the age of AIDS, super viruses, multidrug resistant tuberculosis, and the hovering threat of a global flu pandemic.


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