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Volume XXIV (2008)
of MONOGRAPHIC REVIEW/REVISTA MONOGRÁFICA
will treat the theme of
PESTILENCE, CATASTROPHE, WAR AND DESTRUCTION
IN HISPANIC LITERATURE
From Biblical times and probably
earlier, pestilence’s tracks can be traced across the face of history and
literature, chronicles and prophecy, from the plagues of Egypt and Medieval
scourges such as the Black Death, Bubonic plague, and Red Death to AIDS and
contemporary pandemics—anthrax, Scarlet fever, Cholera, yellow fever, Malaria,
typhus, smallpox, diphtheria, poliomyelitis, and more recently, Ebola.
Infectious diseases have resulted in epidemic or pandemic outbreaks since time
immemorial and continue to proliferate. The term pestilence is applied to any
especially virulent and highly infectious disease; it also applies to parasites
causing widespread sickness and death. Discussion continues as to whether the
first pandemic of Constantinople in the Sixth Century was caused by the same
bacterium as the bubonic plague (associated by some historians with the Black
Death). This scourge in the Fourteenth Century is believed to have killed one
fourth of the population of England, one third of the population of Europe and
half the population of China. Both the “Plague of Justinian” (Constantinople)
and Black Death appear to be associated with rats and fleas, and bubonic plague
with its periodic reappearances holds the record for the most devastating of
epidemics or pandemics. The Black Death continued to strike Europe until well
into the Seventeenth Century and is represented in literature from the
Decameron and Romeo and Juliet to Defoe’s Journal of the Plague
Year chronicling the 1665 London outbreak. In the Nineteenth Century Poe
penned “The Masque of the Red Death” (one of the first to treat that plague).
Such well-known writers as Alessandro Manzoni, Hermann Hesse, Elia Kazan and
Albert Camus (The Plague) have treated pestilence, blending history and
fiction. More recently, numerous science fiction writers and American television
shows such as House, Torchwood, Third Watch and Grey’s
Anatomy have devoted one or more episodes to fictionalizing plagues and
pestilence. Pestilence has often shaped or reshaped history, causing mass
migrations or accompanying wars, decimating armies, wiping out economies and
shifting power. Its historicity notwithstanding, its uses in literature include
the allegorical, and over time it is becoming increasingly fictionalized. But
what of its presence in Hispanic literatures? What is distinctive about the ways
in which Hispanic writers have treated the theme?
Genaro J. Pérez, Editor
Monographic Review/Revista Monográfica
Classical & Modern Languages & Literatures
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, Texas 79409-2071
Phone: 806.742.3145
Fax: 806.742.3306