Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year takes us forward in time, from the Black Death of 1348 to London’s plague in 1665.
The nature of this text is of note, written as if it is a first person account though published over 50 years after the events it describes. The symbiosis between fact and fiction in the text has been fiercely debated, with general consensus appearing to fall with this being a fictionalised account rooted in much research, and based at least in part on primary accounts. Critics have struggled to categorise the text as one or the other, or decide which side it errs on. Mayer’s “The Reception of a Journal of the Plague Year and the Nexus of Fiction and History in the Novel” provides a fantastic overview of varying positions. He concludes a discussion of various critics’ positions with the rather irresolute:
“Alternatively concretized as history, fiction, or history-fiction, the Journal’s ontological status has remained undecidable throughout the history of its reception” (Mayer 544)
The audit style recounting of death counts contributes to a sense of reliability, rooting the more emotive aspects of the novel in a sense of reality. This brought to mind points raised during week 1 about the humanity inherent in the act of recording administrative documents amidst crisis.
The switch to a different, more emotive tone when talking about the human consequence of the plague was also of note. There is something incredible about reading a text and aspects of it resounding centuries lately. In particular, one passage stands out:
“The Face of London was now indeed strangely alter’d, I mean the whole Mass of Buildings, City, Liberties, Suburbs, W’estminster, Southwark and altogether; for as to the particular part called the City, or within the Walls, that was not yet much infected; but in the whole, the Face of Things, I say, was much alter’d; Sorrow and Sadness sat upon every Face; and tho’ some Part were not yet overwhelm’d yet all look’d deeply concern’d”
This sentiment feels very familiar, with the same sense of a city altered and its inhabitants concerned felt acutely around the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
References
Mayer, Robert. “The Reception of a Journal of the Plague Year and the Nexus of Fiction and History in the Novel.” ELH, vol. 57, no. 3, 1990, pp. 529–555. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2873233. Accessed 21 Mar. 2021.