Литература и пандемии
Literature and Pandemics

Summary/Abstract: The author briefly examines three highly influential literary works on pandemics: Daniel Defoe’s “A Journal of the Plague Year”, Alessandro Manzoni’s “The Betrothed”, and Albert Camus’ “The Plague”. What makes pandemics similar across geographic locations and time is not the presence of germs and viruses but that the human response follows the same pattern. All three literary works inform us that the initial human response to the outbreak is typically one of denial. Furthermore, our response to a pandemic tends to be slow and the authorities often provide false numbers about the infected cases and deaths.The important message in „The Plague“ is that although pandemics have a way of upending our lives, they force us to live in the present moment and to see ourselves as members of a community and not as atomized individuals.

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