TY - JOUR
TI - On Two Smallpox Stories (Read in the COVID World)
AU - Antoniuk, Mateusz
TI - On Two Smallpox Stories (Read in the COVID World)
AB - 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.
VL - 2020
IS - Volume 17 Issue 3
PY - 2020
SN - 2083-7658
C1 - 2353-1991
SP - 328
EP - 351
DO - 10.4467/23531991KK.20.025.13139
UR - https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/konteksty-kultury/article/o-dwu-ospowych-opowiesciach-czytanych-w-covidowym-swiecie
KW - smallpox
KW - disease in literature and culture
KW - narrative
KW - rhetoric
KW - COVID-19 pandemic