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THE GREAT PLAGUE VS COVID 19 - REPRESENTATIONS OF CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATIONS DURING PANDEMIC TIMES
Abstract
The aim of our paper is to account for the changes that occurred during the Great Plague of London (1665) and the restrictions imposed by authorities, as recorded by (neo)classics such as Daniel Defoe in his Journal of the Plague Year (1722) and Samuel Pepys’s diary (1660-1669) which only came out in the 19th century. Furthermore, we purport to compare them to the most recent pandemic of our times, i.e., COVID 19, seen through the lenses of (post)modern Romanian authors (Jan Cornelius – Aventurile unui calator naiv, intre miscare si izolare/ The Adventures of A Naive Traveler, Between Movement and Isolation, 2020) and filmmakers (Dan Chisu’s 9 povesti de dragoste si ura in izolare/ 9 Stories of Love and Hate in Isolation, 2020). The contrasting of the two historical periods will hopefully allow us to gain a better understanding of two distinct eras in crisis and the manifestations in two different geographical spaces (the English and Romanian one, respectively). Furthermore, our purpose is to distinguish the mechanisms that led to cultural, social and economic transformation and their outcome, considering communication breakdowns between people, their loved ones and authorities, not to mention despair.
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References9
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