The History of Literature #246 – Giovanni Boccaccio | The Decameron

October 3, 2020August 29, 2020 ~ jackewilson ~ Leave a comment

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 a fortnight of storytelling: ten stories each for ten days. The resulting work was a landmark in the literature of the Italian Renaissance–and thanks to Boccaccio’s energy, inventiveness, and insight into the human condition, the work still exerts a fascinating power nearly seven hundred years later.

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The History of Literature #223 – Speech Sounds by Octavia Butler

Image ~ September 13, 2020August 29, 2020 ~ jackewilson ~ Leave a comment

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. Butler invites us to consider these questions – and helps us look for rays of hope in even the bleakest of landscapes.

Octavia Butler (1947-2006), the daughter of a shoeshine man and a housemaid, went from a poor but proud childhood to becoming “the grand dame of science fiction.” Known for her physically and mentally tough black heroines, her work combines the dynamism of invented worlds with astute observations of race, gender, sexuality, and power.

Music Credits:

“Backbay Lounge” and “Magistar” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The History of Literature #212 – Special Quarantine Edition – Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter

September 3, 2020August 29, 2020 ~ jackewilson ~ Leave a comment

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 the love of her life, Adam, a soldier who is headed off to the Great War.