1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910725100903321

Autore

Sim Stuart

Titolo

Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year and Covid-19 : A Tale of Two Pandemics / / by Stuart Sim

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2023

ISBN

9783031312861

9783031312854

Edizione

[1st ed. 2023.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (83 pages)

Disciplina

828.508

Soggetti

Literature, Modern—18th century

Literature—History and criticism

Medicine and the humanities

Social history

Great Britain—History

Social policy

Eighteenth-Century Literature

Literary History

Medical Humanities

Social History

History of Britain and Ireland

Social Policy

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: Societies in Crisis -- A Journal of the Plague Year in the Twenty-First Century -- Narrating the Pandemic: A Journal of the Plague Year -- Narrating the Pandemic: Covid-19 -- Pandemics in Perspective.

Sommario/riassunto

“A useful, original, and timely book, written with rigour, passion, and emotion. It deserves a wide readership among those who believe classic literature can tell us about our own circumstances and help us to work towards solutions to problems of the present.” ─Prof. Nicholas Seager Head of the School of Humanities, Keele University, Staffordshire, UK



Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year has taken on a new relevance with the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. Through an exploration of two chronologically distant societies in crisis, this study compares the attitudes, beliefs, and conduct of the public portrayed in the book and those in our own embattled Covid era. There are interesting similarities to note, with equivalents to the Covid-deniers and the anti-vaxxers to be found in Defoe's bleak vision of London in the 1660s as it descends into a state of chaos. JPY offers us some uncomfortable truths about human nature that resonate strongly in our own times, revealing how responding to a pandemic can bring out both the best and the worst in our character as we face up to a world where the old certainties no longer seem to apply. Pandemics expose the fault-lines in ideology, putting the social contract at risk - the question they pose is whether we can continue to rely on our current socio-political set-up or whether it requires a radical rethink. There is a pressing need for more debate on this issue, and this project is designed to make a case for that. Stuart Sim is a retired Professor of Critical Theory at Northumbria University, UK, having previously worked for the Open University and the University of Sunderland. He is widely published in the fields of critical theory, literary studies and philosophy, and is a Fellow of the English Association.