Literature has a vital role to play in framing our responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. From Homer’s Illiad
to present day zombie fiction - stories about pandemics have – over the
history of Western culture – offered much in the way of catharsis, ways
of processing strong emotion, and political commentary on how human
beings respond to public health crises. In this Zoom-seminar we will
look at representations of various pandemics in English literature from a
diachronic perspective: We will read Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and Colm Tóbín’s Blackwater Lightship
(1999) and discuss topics such as illness and the human body, anxiety,
otherness and xenophobia as well as (self-)isolation and the value of
human contact over the course of the seminar.
- Trainer/in: Susanne Bayerlipp