The History and Literature of Pandemics

An Online Four-Week Humanities Course

Session 1: April 25 – May 16, 2020 – Full
Session 2: May 2 – May 23, 2020 – Full

Why? The literature of pandemics is rich and revealing. The virus in question may change but human nature remains the same whether it is in response to the Black Plague of 1348 or the Covid-19 virus of 2020. We’ll examine the ways in which individuals and civilizations have coped with epidemics from the Athenian Plague of 434 BCE, to the Great Plague of London in 1665, all the way up to the fictional world of Stephen King’s The Stand (1978).

We are all frightened and bewildered. We ask the question “How could this happen?” both physically—How does a new virus get from Wuhan in China to New Orleans, Louisiana?—and metaphysically—How could it happen that 97% of the American people were sheltering at home in the middle of April, 2020? How could the global economy falter and perhaps collapse? The seventeenth century English poet John Donne argued that if we can channel our griefs through verse (i.e., through the humanities), we can find clarity and ease our suffering:

Then as th' earth's inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water's fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

Our Saturday morning group video discussions will be wide-ranging, but we will try to channel our responses through four excellent pandemic books:

Daniel Defoe. A Journal of the Plague Year. 1721. Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, wrote this fictional account of the Great London Plague of 1665 as a warning to his contemporaries that another plague (so far located in Marseilles in southern France) might devastate all of Europe and the British Isles. Based on extensive research of the available records, Defoe provides a fascinating portrait of London under siege.

Giovanni Boccaccio. The Decameron. 1353. This collection of one hundred tales (short stories) is framed by the Black Plague. Ten young adults escape the plague in Florence by climbing up into the hills in quarantine, where they while away the time by telling each other bawdy, irreverent, quirky stories. The tales are a joy to read. This book is always one of the late medieval texts in great books courses. It’s a reminder of two things: first, global events like these inspire new forms and waves of artistic expression; second, that narrative is essential to the human spirit. Just as people of today are binge watching the entire run of Blue Bloods or NCIS, we have it in our power to use this time to read some of the great books we have all been neglecting. The Decameron is one of them.

Albert Camus. The Plague. 1947. The great French existentialist Camus began this novel in 1941 and published it six years later. Some critics have said that it is the best European novel written in the second half of the twentieth century. In the past few weeks I have been reading all the plague literature I can get my hands on. It turns out to be a very rich field once you put on that lens. But far and away the best psychological study of what a pandemic does to a community is Camus’ La Peste. The parallels in social response are eerily familiar.

Stephen King. The Stand. 1978. King’s fourth novel winds up in the battle of Armegeddon (which takes place near Las Vegas!), but what makes it so interesting is the first couple of hundred pages wherein King explores how a pandemic spreads and the myriad ways individual humans respond to it. This plague began as a biological weapon in a secret Nevada research facility, and it winds up killing nearly everyone.

There will be some additional short readings that I will share, along with video clips, links to articles and essays, photographs, illustrations, and other materials.

Films: If you have time, I urge you to watch Contagion (2011) and The Andromeda Strain (1971). 

Your Takeaway from the Course

The famous eighteenth century literary critic, Dr. Samuel Johnson said, “The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.” These books are entertaining in themselves. Several of them are classics of western literature and they are all worth reading in times of peace and plenty as well as during a pandemic. Among other things they all teach us that 1) we are not alone—our responses have been the same as all people at all times when an epidemic visits seemingly out of nowhere; 2) we will get through this—however apocalyptic this crisis seems at the moment, the day will come when we look back on this serenely as one of the defining moments of our lives; 3) we are extremely fortunate to live when we do because we understand viruses, know how they spread, and have the capacity to develop vaccines to overcome them; 4) the humanities help us cope by “placing” our concerns in a much larger context of history and literature.

How to Get Started

Order the books either on your reading device or through online book sellers such as Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. Start reading. Take a few notes. Make lists of your questions and thoughts so that we can make our Saturday sessions rich in discussion.

I’ll provide some questions and discussion prompts and pre-select and post a number of passages I wish to discuss with all of you.

Meanwhile, you can visit our Google Classroom at any time to post your questions and thoughts. In this way we can keep the discussion going between sessions and help each other with perplexities.