Plague Writing in Early Modern England
Ernest B. Gilman
Abstract
During the seventeenth century, England was beset by three epidemics of the bubonic plague, each outbreak claiming between a quarter and a third of the population of London and other urban centers. Surveying a wide range of responses to these epidemics—sermons, medical tracts, pious exhortations, satirical pamphlets, and political commentary—this book aims to bring to life the many and complex ways Londoners made sense of such unspeakable devastation. The book argues that the plague writing of the period attempted unsuccessfully to rationalize the catastrophic, and that its failure to account ... More
Keywords: seventeenth century, epidemics, bubonic plague, London, sermons, medical tracts, pious exhortations, satirical pamphlets, political commentary, plague writing
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2009 | Print ISBN-13: 9780226294094 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: February 2013 | DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226294117.001.0001 |
