%0 Journal Article
%T On Two Smallpox Stories (Read in the COVID World)
%A Antoniuk, Mateusz
%J Konteksty Kultury
%V 2020
%R 10.4467/23531991KK.20.025.13139
%N Volume 17 Issue 3
%P 328-351
%K smallpox, disease in literature and culture, narrative, rhetoric, COVID-19 pandemic
%@ 2083-7658
%D 2020
%U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/konteksty-kultury/article/o-dwu-ospowych-opowiesciach-czytanych-w-covidowym-swiecie
%X The article proposes a parallel, comparative reading of two texts: the Polish nonfiction story Zaraza (1965) by Jerzy Ambroziewicz and the English essay The Last Days of Smallpox: Tragedy in Birmingham (2018) by Mark Pallen. The texts discuss, respectively, a smallpox epidemic which took place in Wrocław (1963) and an outbreak of the same disease in Birmingham (1978). The present paper studies the similarities and discrepancies in the methods of describing the represented world, narrative techniques, poetics, and rhetoric. The final part of the paper poses the question of how both of these “smallpox stories” may be interpreted in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic.