Reading the Plague

(4 Credits)

Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, a story about a group of young 14th-century Florentines who flee their plague-devastated city for the countryside, begins with a simple claim: “It is a matter of humanity to show compassion for those who suffer.” The plague tested the power of Boccaccio’s pen: “What I have to tell is incredible, and if I and many others had not seen these things with our own eyes, I would scarcely dare to believe them, let alone write them down.” In this seminar we read, discuss, and analyze historical and literary works about the plague and other contagious illnesses, real and fictional. In the account of Thucydides, the plague threw funeral customs into confusion as desperate Athenians sought to dispose of the dead in any way possible. In a haunting story by Dino Buzzati, an infectious disease that afflicts automobiles also debases social relations as friends turn on friends and neighbors on neighbors to report those suspected of harboring infected vehicles. By reading these and other seminal accounts of plague and disease through the centuries by survivors, historians, storytellers, and philosophers, we gain perspective on our own tragic and unsettling times, finding compassion in—that is, “suffering with”—the past.