Plague Time (Again)

2020 ◽  
Vol 92 (4) ◽  
pp. 759-766
Author(s):  
Bryan Waterman
Keyword(s):  
Daniel Defoe ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
Angels In America

Abstract This essay probes literary representations of pandemic temporalities to argue that plague reshapes our sense and experience of time in specific ways: It opens contact with the epidemic past to restructure historical understanding and attendant forms of identity; it promotes utopian or cosmopolitan fantasies of shared vulnerability and future inoculation; it marks survivors with a kind of zombie consciousness in an unending, limitless present. Drawing on American works from Charles Brockden Brown’s Arthur Mervyn (1799–1800) to Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939) to Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (1992–95), this essay situates their discussions of plague time within broader traditions stretching from Thucydides to Daniel Defoe to Albert Camus.

Epidemic as Metaphor: the Allegorical Significance of Epidemic Accounts in Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-218
Author(s):  
Mohammed Naser Hassoon ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Mary Shelley ◽  
Daniel Defoe ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Jack London ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Susan Sontag ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 19Th Century

"Epidemic as Metaphor: The Allegorical Significance of Epidemic Accounts in Literature. Our paper searches for those common elements in selected literary representations of the plagues that have affected humanity. As a theoretical framework for our research, we have considered the contributions of Peta Michell, who equals pandemic with contagion and sees it as a metaphor; Susan Sontag views illness as a punishment or a sign, the subject of a metaphorization. Christa Jansohn sees the pest as a metaphor for an extreme form of collective calamity. For René Girard, the medical plague is a metaphor for the social plague, and Gilles Deleuze thinks that fabulation is a “health enterprise.” From the vast library of the pandemic, we have selected examples from Antiquity to the 19th century: Thucydides, Lucretius, Boccaccio, Daniel Defoe, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, and Jack London. For Camus, the plague is an allegory of evil, oppression and war. Our paper explores the lessons learned from these texts, irrespective of their degree of factuality or fictionality, pointing out how the plague is used metaphorically and allegorically to reveal a more profound truth about different societies and humanity. Keywords: epidemic, plague, The Decameron (Boccaccio), A Journal of the Plague Year (Daniel Defoe), King Pest (Edgar Allan Poe), The Last Man (Mary Shelley), The Nature of Things (Lucretius), The Plague (Albert Camus), The Scarlet Plague (Jack London), The War of the Peloponnesians (Thucydides) "

A Rhetorical Approach to the Prose of Daniel Defoe

1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura A. Curtis
Keyword(s):  
Daniel Defoe ◽  
Figures Of Speech

Abstract: Previous attempts to account for Defoe's stylistic versatility have failed to take account of the important role played by his training in rhetoric. Ttiis essay argues that a useful taxonomy of styles can be generated by taking into account traditional rhetorical principles of sentence composition, prose rhythms and clausulae construction, the use of various figures of speech, and the frequency of tropes. This method of analyzing Defoe's prose shows deliberate rhetorical choices in his lesser-known essays and pamphlets as well as in his better-known fiction.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document