Cultures Of Plague

Author : Cohn Jr.
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191615889
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cultures of Plague written by Cohn Jr. and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultures of Plague opens a new chapter in the history of medicine. Neither the plague nor the ideas it stimulated were static, fixed in a timeless Galenic vacuum over five centuries, as historians and scientists commonly assume. As plague evolved in its pathology, modes of transmission, and the social characteristics of its victims, so too did medical thinking about plague develop. This study of plague imprints from academic medical treatises to plague poetry highlights the most feared and devastating epidemic of the sixteenth-century, one that threatened Italy top to toe from 1575 to 1578 and unleashed an avalanche of plague writing. From erudite definitions, remote causes, cures and recipes, physicians now directed their plague writings to the prince and discovered their most 'valiant remedies' in public health: strict segregation of the healthy and ill, cleaning streets and latrines, addressing the long-term causes of plague-poverty. Those outside the medical profession joined the chorus. In the heartland of Counter-Reformation Italy, physicians along with those outside the profession questioned the foundations of Galenic and Renaissance medicine, even the role of God. Assaults on medieval and Renaissance medicine did not need to await the Protestant-Paracelsian alliance of seventeenth-century in northern Europe. Instead, creative forces planted by the pandemic of 1575-8 sowed seeds of doubt and unveiled new concerns and ideas within that supposedly most conservative form of medical writing, the plague tract. Relying on health board statistics and dramatized with eyewitness descriptions of bizarre happenings, human misery, and suffering, these writers created the structure for plague classics of the eighteenth century, and by tracking the contagion's complex and crooked paths, they anticipated trends of nineteenth-century epidemiology.

Author : Kathleen Miller
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137510579
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Literary Culture of Plague in Early Modern England written by Kathleen Miller and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the literary culture that emerged during and in the aftermath of the Great Plague of London (1665). Textual transmission impacted upon and simultaneously was impacted by the events of the plague. This book examines the role of print and manuscript cultures on representations of the disease through micro-histories and case studies of writing from that time, interpreting the place of these media and the construction of authorship during the outbreak. The macabre history of plague in early modern England largely ended with the Great Plague of London, and the miscellany of plague writings that responded to the epidemic forms the subject of this book.

Author : Franco Mormando
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 161248008X
Total Pages : 533 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Piety and Plague written by Franco Mormando and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2007-09-24 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plague was one of the enduring facts of everyday life on the European continent, from earliest antiquity through the first decades of the eighteenth century. It represents one of the most important influences on the development of Europe’s society and culture. In order to understand the changing circumstances of the political, economic, ecclesiastical, artistic, and social history of that continent, it is important to understand epidemic disease and society’s response to it. To date, the largest portion of scholarship about plague has focused on its political, economic, demographic, and medical aspects. This interdisciplinary volume offers greater coverage of the religious and the psychological dimensions of plague and of European society’s response to it through many centuries and over a wide geographical terrain, including Byzantium. This research draws extensively upon a wealth of primary sources, both printed and painted, and includes ample bibliographical reference to the most important secondary sources, providing much new insight into how generations of Europeans responded to this dread disease.

Author : Giulia Calvi
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520057999
Total Pages : 318 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Histories of a Plague Year written by Giulia Calvi and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1989-01-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A dramatic and highly interesting story--one that brings to life the complexities of plague and of piety."--Natalie Zemon Davis, Princeton University

Author : Paul Slack
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191623962
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Plague: A Very Short Introduction written by Paul Slack and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-03-22 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history plague has been the cause of many major catastrophes. It was responsible for the Black Death of 1348 and the Great Plague of London in 1665, and for devastating epidemics much earlier and much later, in the Mediterranean in the sixth century, and in China and India between the 1890s and 1920s. Today, it has become a metaphor for other epidemic disasters which appear to threaten us, but plague itself has never been eradicated. In this Very Short Introduction, Paul Slack explores the historical impact of plague over the centuries, looking at the ways in which it has been interpreted, and the powerful images it has left behind in art and literature. Examining what plague meant for those who suffered from it, and how governments began to fight against it, he demonstrates the impact plague has had on modern notions of public health and how it has shaped our history. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Author : Rebecca Totaro
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0820705292
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Plague in Print written by Rebecca Totaro and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2021-08-05 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Plague in Print, Rebecca Totaro takes the reader into the world of plague-riddled Elizabethan England, documenting the development of distinct subgenres related to the plague and providing unprecedented access to important original sources of early modern plague writing. Totaro elucidates the interdisciplinary nature of plague writing, which raises religious, medical, civic, social, and individual concerns in early modern England. Each of the primary texts in the collection offers a glimpse into a particular subgenre of plague writing, beginning with Thomas Moulton’s plague remedy and prayers published by the Church of England and devoted to the issue of the plague. William Bullein’s A Dialogue, both pleasant and pietyful, a work that both addresses concerns related to the plague and offers humorous literary entertainment, exemplifies the multilayered nature of plague literature. The plague orders of Queen Elizabeth I highlight the community-wide attempts to combat the plague and deal with its manifold dilemmas. And after a plague bill from the Corporation of London, the collection ends with Thomas Dekker’s The Wonderful Year, which illustrates plague literature as it was fully formed, combining attitudes toward the plague from both the Elizabethan and Stuart periods. These writings offer a vivid picture of important themes particular to plague literature in England, providing valuable insight into the beliefs and fears of those who suffered through bubonic plague while illuminating the cultural significance of references to the plague in the more familiar early modern literature by Spenser, Donne, Milton, Shakespeare, and others. As a result, The Plague in Print will be of interest to students and scholars in a number of fields, including sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature, cultural studies, medical humanities, and the history of medicine.

Author : James Belich
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691219168
Total Pages : 640 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The World the Plague Made written by James Belich and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-25 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking history of how the Black Death unleashed revolutionary change across the medieval world and ushered in the modern age In 1346, a catastrophic plague beset Europe and its neighbours. The Black Death was a human tragedy that abruptly halved entire populations and caused untold suffering, but it also brought about a cultural and economic renewal on a scale never before witnessed. The World the Plague Made is a panoramic history of how the bubonic plague revolutionized labour, trade, and technology and set the stage for Europe’s global expansion. James Belich takes readers across centuries and continents to shed new light on one of history’s greatest paradoxes. Why did Europe’s dramatic rise begin in the wake of the Black Death? Belich shows how plague doubled the per capita endowment of everything even as it decimated the population. Many more people had disposable incomes. Demand grew for silks, sugar, spices, furs, gold, and slaves. Europe expanded to satisfy that demand—and plague provided the means. Labour scarcity drove more use of waterpower, wind power, and gunpowder. Technologies like water-powered blast furnaces, heavily gunned galleons, and musketry were fast-tracked by plague. A new “crew culture” of “disposable males” emerged to man the guns and galleons. Setting the rise of Western Europe in global context, Belich demonstrates how the mighty empires of the Middle East and Russia also flourished after the plague, and how European expansion was deeply entangled with the Chinese and other peoples throughout the world.

Author : Norman F. Cantor
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1476797749
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book In the Wake of the Plague written by Norman F. Cantor and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Black Death was the fourteenth century's equivalent of a nuclear war. It wiped out one-third of Europe's population, taking millions of lives. The author draws together the most recent scientific discoveries and historical research to pierce the mist and tell the story of the Black Death as a gripping, intimate narrative.

Author : Rebecca Totaro
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136963243
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Representing the Plague in Early Modern England written by Rebecca Totaro and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-09-13 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection offers readers a timely encounter with the historical experience of people adapting to a pandemic emergency and the corresponding narrative representation of that crisis, as early modern writers transformed the plague into literature. The essays examine the impact of the plague on health, politics, and religion as well as on the plays, prose fiction, and plague bills that stand as witnesses to the experience of a society devastated by contagious disease. Readers will find physicians and moralists wrestling with the mysteries of the disease; erotic escapades staged in plague-time plays; the poignant prose works of William Bullein and Thomas Dekker; the bodies of monarchs who sought to protect themselves from plague; the chameleon-like nature of the plague as literal disease and as metaphor; and future strains of plague, literary and otherwise, which we may face in the globally-minded, technology-dependent, and ecologically-awakened twenty-first century. The bubonic plague compelled change in all aspects of lived experience in Early Modern England, but at the same time, it opened space for writers to explore new ideas and new literary forms—not all of them somber or horrifying and some of them downright hilarious. By representing the plague for their audiences, these writers made an epidemic calamity intelligible: for them, the dreaded disease could signify despair but also hope, bewilderment but also a divine plan, quarantine but also liberty, death but also new life.

Author : William McNeill
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0307773663
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Plagues and Peoples written by William McNeill and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-10-27 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of disease is the history of humankind: an interpretation of the world as seen through the extraordinary impact—political, demographic, ecological, and psychological—of disease on cultures. "A book of the first importance, a truly revolutionary work." —The New Yorker From the conquest of Mexico by smallpox as much as by the Spanish, to the bubonic plague in China, to the typhoid epidemic in Europe, Plagues and Peoples is "a brilliantly conceptualized and challenging achievement" (Kirkus Reviews). Upon its original publication, Plagues and Peoples was an immediate critical and popular success, offering a radically new interpretation of world history. With the identification of AIDS in the early 1980s, another chapter was added to this chronicle of events, which William McNeill explores in his introduction to this edition. Thought-provoking, well-researched, and compulsively readable, Plagues and Peoples is essential reading—that rare book that is as fascinating as it is scholarly, as intriguing as it is enlightening.