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The discussion on the mythology thread (Greeks and Romans or Romans and Greeks) led me to consider writers who had lived through a plague, such as Sophocles and Chaucer.
Who are the notable others, I wonder?
Any help with this subject that is plaguing my imagination will be appreciated.
Best regards,
WordFlea
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Boccaccio, Giovanni 1313-75 Plague in 1348 .Dictionary of Difficult Words - loimic www.LineOne.net Reference, Goto Reference goto, home. search, messages, help, assistant, log out. loimic. a. pertaining to plague. loimology, n. study of plague. ... http://www.lineone.net/dictionaryof/difficultwords/d0007703.html More Results From: www.lineone.net A URL to Introduction to the Decameron - very long very tedious to read. The naughty stories are at Brown University, but some of them have been bowdlerized shamefully! http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/boccacio2.html
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Petrarch 1304-74. The encyclopedia does not mention his writing about the plague, but the Laura he immortalized, died in the plague year 1348. Sounds as though there might be a story there. Here is a URL about the many other times plague epidemics hit Europe: http://www.beyond.fr/history/plague.html In one of the worst, cause was greedy merchants who wanted silk cargo on ship with known cases of plague inducing authorities to lift the quarantine.
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Thucydides -- Greek historian of the 5th century BC. He lived through the great plague at Athens and wrote an account of it in his history. I think he may even have caught it but recovered, but I'm not sure. Nobody can identify what the plague was but I have heard a theory that it might have been the first outbreak of measles. It's a tad too long to quote here, but you can find a translation of Thucydides's description of the plague at http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_thucydides_plague.htm Bingley
Bingley
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veteran
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Samuel Pepys lived through the second wave of the plague in England during the Restoration era. Don't remember offhand if he wrote much about it in the famous diary.
Bocaccio began The Decameron with a graphic account of the plague in Florence which is very worthwhile reading.
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There is a bevy of work about The Great Flu Pandemic of 1918, a plague that raced around the world killing 50 million. Don't know how many "name" writers of the time addressed the issue, but I recall a particulalry gut-wrenching journalisitic account of the pandemic in Philadelphia, the day to day fear and how they were literally piling the bodies in the streets. People tend to overlook this horrible plague due to the shadow of WWI.
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50 million in the flu pandemic, Whitman? Incredible. I will definitely track down some information on this.
Thanks to all who have posted so far. I think a thematic unit built around the plague would be a good umbrella for studies (e.g., literary, writing, history, health) in high school.
Best regards,
WW
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WWI flu figure I saw was 20 million, which is bad enough.
There waa a plague of books and articles written about it.
One of the very best books about epidemics is Hans Zinnser, Rats, Lice, and History. 1935
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The 1918 influenza strain was remarkable in two regards that made it terrifying, beyond simply the death total. First, it had an unusually high mortality rate for an influenza (about 10%, as I recall. This however is far lower than the mortaility rate of such plagues as the Black Death). Second, and unlike almost all other influenza strains, its incidence was not principally among the very young, the very old, and the infirm. It principally struck otherwise-healthy young people of ages 18-30.
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