Anthropocene vs. Plague: Disastrous Plagues and Their Impact on Society as Seen in Seen in Literature from Thucydides to Modern Speculative Fiction

Result code in IS VaVaI

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Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Anthropocene vs. Plague: Disastrous Plagues and Their Impact on Society as Seen in Seen in Literature from Thucydides to Modern Speculative Fiction

Original language description

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the key aspects of the disastrous epidemies and their relation to the evolution of catastrophic thinking before and during the Anthropocene. The fictitious diseases and the elements of unpredictability they bring are seen as a way to cope with the burden of responsibility imposed on humans in the Anthropocene. This take on the topic deals with older texts such as Thucydides&apos;s History of the Peloponnesian War, Lucretius&apos;s epic Of Nature or the medieval accounts of plague; and also with modern texts including The Scarlet Plague (Jack London, 1912), The Virility Factor (Robert Merle, 1974), The Death of Grass (John Christopher, 1956), The Dog Stars (Peter Heller, 2012) and others. The main point of interest is to compare the image and function of an apocalyptic disease in both older and newer works and to point out the differences and similarities between them, outlining the shift that has occurred in this genre with the coming of Anthropocene. The change the perception of a catastrophic plague has undergone is shown particularly in three major points – in the origin of the plague, its ability to impose a significant social change, and its relation to time. The first part examines how the origin of the plague is described, with possible explanations being man-induced epidemics, natural causes, and supernatural causes, both demonic or divine. The anthropocentric worldview has reshuffled the roles and significance of those origin-stories, putting the tensions between human and non-human into the spotlight; this chapter aims to describe how the explanations of the plague&apos;s existence serve various functions, among others helping to constitute the modern apocalyptic concepts. Although the catastrophic disease is seen as a major agent of social change both in pre-modern writings and in modern speculative fiction, the exact nature of the change differs, as the modern texts take into account various components of human culture such as gender and gender roles (Merle), brotherhood (Christopher), xenophobia (Heller) or language (London). Some of the narratives can be even described as social experiments, with the plague present as the main catalyst of the desired cultural shift. The third important topic discussed in this chapter is the issue of time and temporality. The modern conception of linear time is sometimes shown as broken up or reversed by the catastrophic plague, turning the Anthropocene back into the Golden Age or simply into an uncivilized state.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

C - Chapter in a specialist book

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60204 - General literature studies

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2021

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Book/collection name

Images of the Anthropocene in Speculative Fiction: Narrating the Future

ISBN

978-1-79363-663-8

Number of pages of the result

15

Pages from-to

105-119

Number of pages of the book

276

Publisher name

Lexington Books

Place of publication

Lanham

UT code for WoS chapter

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