04390nam 22007215 450 991072510090332120230512154841.09783031312861(electronic bk.)978303131285410.1007/978-3-031-31286-1(MiAaPQ)EBC7248785(Au-PeEL)EBL7248785(OCoLC)1379437510(DE-He213)978-3-031-31286-1(BIP)089945439(CKB)26637862300041(EXLCZ)992663786230004120230512d2023 u| 0engurcnu||||||||txtrdacontentcrdamediacrrdacarrierDaniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year and Covid-19 A Tale of Two Pandemics /by Stuart Sim1st ed. 2023.Cham :Springer International Publishing :Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan,2023.1 online resource (83 pages)Print version: Sim, Stuart Daniel Defoe's a Journal of the Plague Year and Covid-19 Cham : Springer International Publishing AG,c2023 9783031312854 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.“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.Literature, Modern—18th centuryLiterature—History and criticismMedicine and the humanitiesSocial historyGreat Britain—HistorySocial policyEighteenth-Century LiteratureLiterary HistoryMedical HumanitiesSocial HistoryHistory of Britain and IrelandSocial PolicyEnglish LiteratureLiterature, 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.828.508Sim Stuart144074MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQ9910725100903321Daniel Defoe's a Journal of the Plague Year and Covid-193368596UNINA