Spring 2015
Brandeis University
Jodie Austin
Course Proposal:
“Poetics of Plague Writing”
Abstract:
This course examines the origins of the plague narrative in early modern literature, comparing 17th century depictions of the pestilence (from Shakespearean plays to medical treatises) to representations of plague in contemporary literature and popular media, including video games.
Course description:
The power behind one of the most memorable curses from Shakespeare's plays stems from its invocation of a terrible and deadly disease: the bubonic plague. As a virulent contagion, the plague continued to capture the imagination of writers well after it had abated in Europe. This course will focus on the origins of the plague narrative in early modern English literature, expanding its scope in the latter half of the semester to include more modern depictions of the plague in both literature and film. Early modern plague texts require historical contextualization, especially in light of the printing revolution in Europe and the Reformation. For this reason, class discussions will emphasize the often complex and symbiotic relationship between disease, writing, and media, beginning with a historical approach before transitioning into more recent, theoretical ways of conceptualizing disease and society. Students will be asked to critically examine the persistence of the plague narrative in these texts and produce thoughtful responses regarding the relationship between social and epidemiological crises.
Readings will range from drama to poetry to pamphlets, including works by William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Dekker, as well as Albert Camus’ novel The Plague and Steven Soderbergh’s film Contagion. Furthermore, students will be treated to lectures on/be invited to play The Last of Us (2013), a modern take on social responses to epidemics. Participants will be asked to write two comprehensive papers for this course in response to the texts covered in class.
10%- Class participation 10%
20%- Five LATTE posts in response to any of the selected texts 20%
30%- One 5-7 page paper, due mid-semester, that engages 1-2 selected texts more directly in and produces an original argument pertaining to the “utility” of the plague in early modern England
40%- One 5-7 page paper that engages 1-2 selected texts and puts them in dialogue with modern plague narratives, including those related to current events/outbreaks (Ebola, H1N1, aviary flu, etc.)
Learning Objectives:
· To be able to trace the historical origins of plague narratives in literature and popular media, beginning and focusing on 17th century drama, poetry and medical treatises
· To be able to identify and analyze parallels between the concepts of technological rebirth/renaissance and the discourse of contagion, both in the 17th century European Renaissance and in the modern digital era
· To be able to think critically about the continual need/desire for for humanistic inquiry and literary output alongside empirical investigations in times of epidemic
· To be able to articulate the relationship between epidemics and regional identity or social belonging, and cite how texts continually influence this dynamic
Week 1-2: Intro/Dramatizing the Plague
Defining and historicizing the origins of the Western plague narrative and the plague’s impact on early modern England, with a focus on London. Tracing the curious absence of direct references to the plague in 17th century drama; looking at more blatant references to the pestilence in Shakespeare.
Selections from: Paul Slack’s The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England and Leeds Barroll’s Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare's Theater: The Stuart Years
William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure
Students will be asked to post their first response to any of the above texts on LATTE within the first two weeks; more specifically, participants are encouraged to speculate, based upon readings and lecture content, as to why the plague was largely ignored as a dramatic subject in 17th century English literature and what this might suggest about the relationship between plague and dramatic literature at the time.
Week 3: The Plague and the Physical Body
Examining early modern literature centering upon questions of the body and health during plague-time and attempts to reconcile the ailing body with the “reformed” soul.
John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
Thomas Lodge, “A Treatise of the Plague”
Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
LATTE prompt: How does the plague factor into pre-existing anxieties about the flesh and the spirit in these texts? How do these authors succeed (or fail to succeed) in reconciling the awful effects of disease upon the body with their view of God/celestial influences? How do their rhetorical strategies differ in this respect?
Week 4-5: Something Is Rotten: the Plague and the Body Politic
Expanding upon the idea of the “plagued” body to include related depictions of the sick society in 17th century Europe. Looking at similar discourse in contemporary media.
Thomas Lodge, “A Treatise of the Plague”
Harvey, Gideon. A Discourse of the Plague Containing the Nature, Causes, Signs, and Presages of the Pestilence in General
Ben Jonson, The Alchemist
James I, King of England, 1566-1625, The Kings Majesties Declaration to His Subjects, Concerning Lawful Sports to Be Used
Leona Dale, "Jonson's Sick Society"
First paper due
LATTE prompt: all of the texts discussed in weeks 4-5 attempt, one way or another, to address the threat of a sick society. Yet not all social sicknesses are equal; do you agree with Dale’s interpretation of Jonson’s view of London in The Alchemist? In part, you should strive to “diagnose the diagnosis” in this exercise; since Jonson also seems to be recommending a remedy for his afflicted country, it is necessary to formulate an opinion on what you believe this remedy to believe and how this might compare/contrast to other 17th century views of the plague’s impact on society.
Week 6: The Plague and the City
Looking at the curiously related projects of plague literature and fictions of citywide solidarity/”our town” sentiment.
Albert Camus’ The Plague
Selections from Thomas Dekker: The Plague Pamphlets of Thomas Dekker
Selections from: Steven Mullaney, The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England
LATTE prompt: many plague narratives, even modern ones, remain inextricably tied to stories of the city. These are not narratives that promote unilateral “bonding” agendas necessarily but, nevertheless, the pairing of plague stories with city stories remains consistent. How might plague literature continually illuminate our concept of the city as a topographic entity rather than simply a space inhabited by people? Do these texts help to reify Michel de Certeau’s vision of the city as “a universe of rented spaces”?
Week 7-8: Harnessing Disease
Interrogating the notion of a useful plague, or how the dissemination of plague-related information contributes to constructs of control
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (return to text)
Steven Soderbergh, Contagion
Greenberg, Stephen, "Plague, the Printing Press, and Public Health in Seventeenth-Century London”
LATTE prompt: in response to the readings for weeks 7-8, make an argument for ways in which plagues both create and maintain spaces for conventional control, or controlled subversion. Furthermore, consider how media type/formatting affects the impact or degree of control during plague-time.
Week 9: The Plague’s the Purge
Highlighting examples in literature and film of subversive plagues, or plagues that perform an active social remedy
William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
Selections from Thomas Dekker, The Plague Pamphlets of Thomas Dekker
Ben Jonson, “On the Famous Voyage”
LATTE prompt: in contrast to the previous week’s readings (or perhaps as a compliment to the previous week’s readings), the texts from week 9 present the possibility of a plague that has a remedial or therapeutic effect. How would you delineate between related visions of disease as “happily nihilistic” and the plagues in Timon or “News from Graves-end”?
Week 10-11: The Infected Text
Regarding texts that are either figuratively or literally “infected” with plagues.
Selected writings by Thomas More
Selections from Thomas Dekker, The Plague Pamphlets of Thomas Dekker
Bruce McDonald, Pontypool
Optional: Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash
LATTE prompt: the notion of viral media has been commonplace for quite some time now, so much that many media outlets have become synonymous with viral trends regardless of their circulation/impact. For the readings this week, make an argument as to whether viral media is the same as infected media; in other words, are the texts discussed vectors or pathogenic in of themselves?
Week 12: Plague on the Margins
Examining the relationship between plagues and social and geopolitical marginality
Excerpts from: Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Selections from: Steven Mullaney, The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England
David Quammen, “Ebola Virus: A Grim, African Reality”, New York Times
James Ciment, “America in Africa: the tragic, misunderstood history of Liberia—and why the United States has a special obligation to help it fight the Ebola epidemic”, Slate
Week 13: Crisis and Rebirth
Concluding with discussions on the ever-evolving relationship between epidemiological crisis and social transformation.
Defoe, Daniel, A Journal of the Plague Year
Selections from Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe
John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
Cheryl Lynn Ross, "The Plague of the Alchemist"
Optional: The Last of Us (2013)
Final paper due
This final week will wrap up with eclectic reading selections both old and new; final lectures will conclude by proposing that plague narratives cannot be divorced from plague media, and that this paradigm has remained into the 21st century despite perceived shifts in media trends. Additionally, this course will conclude with students being asked to meditate on the parallels between the 17th century Renaissance and our modern “digital renaissance,” including their adoption/proliferation of contagion rhetoric. The media is the message, and the message, as Thomas Dekker would say, is “not sorely but somewhat infected.”
Required Texts
Primary texts
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
Ben Jonson, The Alchemist
John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
Defoe, Daniel, A Journal of the Plague Year
Albert Camus, The Plague
Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and Aids and Its Metaphors
Ernest B. Gilman, Plague Writing in Early Modern England
Included in reader
James I, King of England, 1566-1625, The Kings Majesties Declaration to His Subjects, Concerning Lawful Sports to Be Used
Selections from Thomas Dekker, The Plague Pamphlets of Thomas Dekker
Ben Jonson, “On the Famous Voyage”
Thomas Lodge, “A Treatise of the Plague”
Gideon Harvey, A Discourse of the Plague Containing the Nature, Causes, Signs, and Presages of the Pestilence in General
Excerpts from: Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Leona Dale, "Jonson's Sick Society"
Greenberg, Stephen. "Plague, the Printing Press, and Public Health in Seventeenth-Century London”
Cheryl Lynn Ross, "The Plague of the Alchemist"
Selections from Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Selections from Leeds Barroll, Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare's Theater: The Stuart Years
Selections from Paul Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England
Selections from Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe
David Quammen, “Ebola Virus: A Grim, African Reality”, New York Times
Recommended/Optional Texts
Thomas Nashe, “Summer’s Last Will and Testament”
Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys
William Bullein, “A Dialogue Bothe Pleasant and Pitiful Wherein Is a Goodly Regiment against the Fever Pestilence”
Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson: “The Magnificent Entertainment”
Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash
The Last of Us (videogame, 2013)
Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe
Margaret Healy, Fictions of Disease in Early Modern England
Steven Mullaney, The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger