Description
Myths and Memories of the Black Death, 1st ed. 2022
Author: Dodds Ben
Language: EnglishPublication date: 12-2022
290 p. · 14.8x21 cm · Paperback
Publication date: 12-2021
290 p. · 14.8x21 cm · Hardback
Description
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This book explores modern representations of the Black Death, a medieval pandemic. The concept of cultural memory is used to examine the ways in which journalists, writers of fiction, scholars and others referred to, described and explained the Black Death from around 1800 onwards. The distant medieval past was often used to make sense of aspects of the present, from the cholera pandemics of the nineteenth-century to the climate crisis of the early twenty-first century. A series of overlapping myths related to the Black Death emerged based only in part on historical evidence. Cultural memory circulates in a variety of media from the scholarly article to the video game and online video clip, and the connections and differences between mediated representations of the Black Death are considered. The Black Death is one of the most well-known aspects of the medieval world, and this study of its associated memories and myths reveals the depth and complexity of interactions between the distant and recent past.
Explores the enduring influence of the Black Death in historical memory
Unpicks exclusionary narratives of the Black Death relating to race and gender
Analyses both the historiography of the Black Death and its popular representation in novels and films