데커의 역병 팸플릿에서 드러나는 역병 담론의 정치
The Politics of the Plague Discourse in Early Modern England: Thomas Dekker’s Plague Pamphlets
0
조회
0
다운로드
1
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
This paper explores Thomas Dekker’s two early plague pamphlets, The Wonderful Year (1603) and News from Gravesend (1604), which were written after the outbreak of the plague in London in 1603. The effect of the great plagues in late 16th and early 17th century London can be compared to that of the atomic bomb in modern times, sweeping away 1/8 to 1/6 of the metropolitan population and devastating the whole city system. Writing about plagues is far from objective, deploying writers’s socio-political perspective. It is especially true in early modern England, in which different disciplines such as medicine, politics, and literature had not been as discrete as they were after the Enlightenment. As Thomas Lodge’s A Treatise of the Plague (1603) typically shows, early modern plague discourses tried to explain the ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’ of the plagues through natural means and supernatural myths, relying on various classical texts and the Bible. They also presented the horrors of the pestilence and suggested to people the ways to survive. They, along with the plague Orders from the London government, usually attributed the origin of the plague to the ‘base’ and ‘immoderate’ poor and their overcrowded housing in the ‘sinful’ suburbs, urging Londoners who had the means to, to flee from the city during the outbreaks. In this sense the plague and the plague Order in the first decade of the seventeenth century served to intensify, highlight, and express an increasing polarization of social conditions based on wealth. Dekker’s plague pamphlets can be posited as one alternative voice among various political voices in early modern England, articulating the interests of the poor. Unlike most pamphlet writers of his times, he pointed out that sin, not contagion, causes the plague, and the greed and selfishness of the wealthy are the root of God’s displeasure. His persistent message is that only charity can bring the cessation of the plague, conveying a pressing need for social reform to alleviate the suffering of the poor. Through Dekker’s pamphlets, we can hear a voice different from the self-representation of the state as well as the powerful and affluent metropolitan elite of the early modern London at the time of the social crisis.
Abstract
This paper explores Thomas Dekker’s two early plague pamphlets, The Wonderful Year (1603) and News from Gravesend (1604), which were written after the outbreak of the plague in London in 1603. The effect of the great plagues in late 16th and early 17th century London can be compared to that of the atomic bomb in modern times, sweeping away 1/8 to 1/6 of the metropolitan population and devastating the whole city system. Writing about plagues is far from objective, deploying writers’s socio-political perspective. It is especially true in early modern England, in which different disciplines such as medicine, politics, and literature had not been as discrete as they were after the Enlightenment. As Thomas Lodge’s A Treatise of the Plague (1603) typically shows, early modern plague discourses tried to explain the ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’ of the plagues through natural means and supernatural myths, relying on various classical texts and the Bible. They also presented the horrors of the pestilence and suggested to people the ways to survive. They, along with the plague Orders from the London government, usually attributed the origin of the plague to the ‘base’ and ‘immoderate’ poor and their overcrowded housing in the ‘sinful’ suburbs, urging Londoners who had the means to, to flee from the city during the outbreaks. In this sense the plague and the plague Order in the first decade of the seventeenth century served to intensify, highlight, and express an increasing polarization of social conditions based on wealth. Dekker’s plague pamphlets can be posited as one alternative voice among various political voices in early modern England, articulating the interests of the poor. Unlike most pamphlet writers of his times, he pointed out that sin, not contagion, causes the plague, and the greed and selfishness of the wealthy are the root of God’s displeasure. His persistent message is that only charity can bring the cessation of the plague, conveying a pressing need for social reform to alleviate the suffering of the poor. Through Dekker’s pamphlets, we can hear a voice different from the self-representation of the state as well as the powerful and affluent metropolitan elite of the early modern London at the time of the social crisis.
참고문헌 (25)
- Archer, Ian W, "The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan" (1991), Cambridge UP
- Bayman, Anna, "Thomas Dekker and the Culture of Pamphleteering in Early Modern London" (2014), Ashgate
- Bullein, William, "A Dialogue both pleasant and pietifull, wherein is a godlie regiment against the Fever Pestilence, with a consolation and comforte aginste death"
- Clark, Sandra, "The Elizabethan Pamphleteers: Popular Moralistic Pamphlets 1580-1640" (1983), Fairleigh Dickenson UP
- Comensoli, Viviana, "Introduction. Lantern and Candle-light. Publications of the Barnabe Riche Society. Vol. 18", pp.11~68 (2007), Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies
- Dekker, Thomas, "The Wonderful Year. Three Elizabethan Pamphlets", pp.160~207 (1951), George G. Harrap
- Dekker, Thomas, "News from Gravesend. Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works", pp.128~148 (2007), Oxford UP
- Douglas, Mary, "Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. 1966" (2003), Routlege
- Discourse of the Plague in Early Modern London, In Epidemic Disease in London, "Healy, Margaret", Centre for Metropolitan History, 19~34, pp.Centre for Metropolitan History Working Papers Series, No. 1 (1993)
- Healy, Margaret, "Fictions of Disease in Early Modern England: Bodies, Plagues and Politics" (2001), Palgrave
- Hibbard, G. R. Introduction, "Three Elizabethan Pamphlets", pp.11~34 (1951), George G. Harrap
- Howard, Jean, "A Companion to Shakespeare", pp.297~310 (1999), Blackwell
- Hoy, Cyrus, "Introductions, Notes, and Commentaries to Texts in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker" (1979), Cambridge UP
- Hunt, Mary Leland, "Thomas Dekker: A Study" (1911), Columbia UP
- Lodge, Thomas, "A Treatise of the Plague. The Complete Works of Thomas Lodge. Vol. IV", pp.3~86 (1963), Russell & Russell
- Maslen, Robert, "News from Gravesend: Sent to Nobody. Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works", pp.128~131 (2007), Oxford UP
- Milton, John, "Paradise Lost. 1667" (1975), W. W. Norton & Company
- Mullaney, Steven, "The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England" (1995), U. of Michigan P
- Raymond, Joad, "Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain" (2003), Cambridge UP
- Slack, Paul, "The Making of the Metropolis: London 1500-1700", pp.60~81 (1986), Longman
- Slack, Paul, "The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England" (1985), Clarendon Press
- Sontag, Susan, "Aids and Metaphors" (1989), Penguin
- Plague in London: Spatial and Temporal Aspects of Mortality, In Epidemic Disease in London, "Twigg, Graham", Centre for Metropolitan, 1~17, pp.for Metropolitan History Working Papers Series, No. 1 (1993)
- Twyning, John, "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 5", pp.697~700 (2004), Oxford UP
- Wells, Stanley, "Shakespeare and Co.: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher, and the Other Players in His Story", pp.106~128 (2008), Vintage Books