pandemic
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The History of Literature #515 — The Plague by Albert Camus (with Alice Kaplan and Laura Marris) | My Last Book with Alison Strayer
What were you doing when the pandemic arose? And did you turn to The Plague by Albert Camus to help you make sense of it all? For two Camus scholars, the pandemic resonated in unexpected ways – and shed new light on a work they’d been studying for years. In this episode, Jacke talks to authors Alice Continue reading
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The History of Literature #246 – Giovanni Boccaccio | The Decameron
As the Black Death swept through the city of Florence, Italian poet and scholar Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) began writing his classic tale of survival and revelry. The Decameron (1349-1353) tells the story of ten individuals who have retreated to a country villa to avoid the disease. While in this state of self-quarantine, they embark upon Continue reading
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The History of Literature #223 – Speech Sounds by Octavia Butler
Imagine a plague that ravages the world and impairs the ability of humans to communicate with one another. What kind of society would we have? Who would take power and how would they hold it? What would the world be like for the powerless? How would children adapt and survive? In “Speech Sounds,” Octavia E. Continue reading
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The History of Literature #212 – Special Quarantine Edition – Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter
As the world deals with a pandemic, we turn to one of America’s greatest (and least appreciated) writers, Katherine Anne Porter, and her masterpiece, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, a short novel that tells the story of Miranda, a newspaper woman who falls ill during the 1918 flu pandemic (also known as the “Spanish flu”), and Continue reading
Jacke Wilson 