Literary Representations of Pandemics, Epidemics and Pestilence

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-032-27856-8
Verlag: Routledge India

Buch, Englisch, 204 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 322 g

Disease, pestilence and contagion have been an integral component of human lives and stories. This book explores the articulations and representations of the vulnerability of life or the trauma of death in literature about epidemics both from India and around the world.

This book critically engages with stories and narratives that have dealt with pandemics or epidemics in the past and in contemporary times to see how these texts present human life coming to terms with upheaval, fear and uncertainty. Set in various places and times, the literature examined in this book explores the themes of human suffering and resilience, inequality, corruption, the ruin of civilizations and the rituals of grief and remembrance. The chapters in this volume cover a wide spatio-temporal trajectory analysing the writings of Fakir Mohan Senapati and Suryakant Tripathi Nirala, Jack London, Albert Camus, Margaret Atwood, Sarat Chand, Pandita Ramabai and Christina Sweeney-Baird, among others. It gives readers a glimpse into both grounded and fantastical realities where disease and death clash with human psychology and where philosophy, politics and social values are critiqued and problematized.

This book will be of interest to students of English literature, social science, gender studies, cultural studies, psychology, society, politics and philosophy. General readers too will find this exciting as it covers authors from across the world.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pulugurtha, Nishi

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Regionalwissenschaften, Regionalstudien
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Contributors

Introduction

Nishi Pulugurtha

I - Memory and Contagion

- "Vernacular Realities" in Epidemic Literature: Reading Fakir Mohan Senapati’s "Rebati" and Suryakant Tripathi Nirala’s Kulli Bhaat

Sipra Mukherjee

- The Trauma and the Triumph: Katherine Anne Porter’s "Pale Horse, Pale Rider"

Tania Chakravertty

- Pandemic and the Man-less Society: Problematizing Gender, Sex, and Sexuality in Christina Sweeney-Baird’s The End of Men

Goutam Karmakar

II - Uncanny Dilemmas

- The Decameron: Re-reading the Uncanny Riddle of Plague

Riti Agarwala

- Mary Shelley's The Last Man: Dystopian Fiction and Pandemics

Sarottama Majumdar

- Epidemic Anxiety and Narrative Aesthetics in Sarat Chandra's Palli Samaj and Pandit Mashay

Subham Dutta

- Albert Camus' Rejoinder to the Absent God and the Absurdity of Existence in The Plague

Sacaria Joseph

III - Moving Between Language and Media

- "It Mattered Not From Whence It Came; But All Agreed It Was Come. ": Plague Narratives as Narratives of Media and Foreignness

Amit R. Baishya

- Forgotten Difference: The Plague in Hindi and Urdu Literature

Ishan Mehandru

- The Periwig Maker and Defoe: A Déjà vu Upon the Present

Sanghita Sanyal

IV - Fear, Disaster and Dystopia

- Pestilence, Death, Fear and a Testimony of Female Outrage: The 1897 Bombay Plague in the Writing of Pandita Ramabai

Subarna Bhattacharya

- Pandemic as a Disaster: Narratives of Suffering and "Risk" in Twilight in Delhi

Sumantra Baral

- Pandemic Fear: Death and the Ruin of Civilization in Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague

Paramita Dutta De

- Pandemic and the End of the World in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake

Sayan Aich Bhowmik

V - COVID-19, Public health and Social justice

- Power and the Pandemic Through Two Gothic Tropes

Tabish Khair

- Following the Dead: Digital Obituaries as Rituals of Selective Remembrance During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Yash Gupta

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Nishi Pulugurtha is Associate Professor at the Department of English, Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College, Kolkata, India.