Publisher's Synopsis
How does Boccaccio treat the Black Death in his "Decameron"? How does AIDS figure in the contemporary plays of Larry Kramer and William Hoffman? How have the historical and current outbreaks of contagious disease affected the creation of literature and how has this literature in turn shaped our response to disease? What can art hope to achieve in the midst of an epidemic?;In addressing these questions Barbara Fass Leavy studies literary works whose main themes have to do with some form of contagious or pestilential physical disease and its social or psychological consequences. Leavy investigates such works as "A Journal of the Plague Year" by Daniel Defoe, "The Pardoner's Tale" by Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Decameron" by Giovanni Boccaccio, "The Masque of the Red Death" and other tales by Edgar Allan Poe, "Ghosts" and "An Enemy of the People" by Henbrik Ibsen, "As Is" by William Hoffman, "The Normal Heart" by Larry Kramer, "Chip off the Old Block" by Wallace Stegner, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" by Katherine Anne Porter, "Damaged Goods" by Eugene Brieux, "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne and "The Plague" by Albert Camus.
