Writing Plague: Language and Violence from the Black Death to COVID-19

Author / Editor
Thomas, Alfred.

Title
Writing Plague: Language and Violence from the Black Death to COVID-19

Published
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

Physical Description
xxiv, 265 pp.

Series
The New Middle Ages.

Description
Explores the "psychological continuities between the Black Death and COVID-19" in a series of four essays, arranged chronologically, with an introduction, conclusion, and comprehensive index. Chapter 2, titled "The Pardoner, the Prioress, and the Pandemic: Jews and Other Scapegoats in Fourteenth-Century European Culture," identifies "anti-Semitism as a generic feature of plague writing in the late fourteenth century," including but not limited to PardT and PrT, with consistent associations between Jews and heretics, pollution, and filth. Connects Chaucer’s works with a range of visual and verbal texts; includes 17 color illustrations.

Alternative Title
The Pardoner, the Prioress, and the Pandemic: Jews and Other Scapegoats in Fourteenth-Century European Culture,

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism
Prioress and Her Tale
Pardoner and His Tale