Article ID: CBB448730401

The Dramaturgy of Epidemics (2020)

unapi

My essay focuses on Charles Rosenberg's provocative and enduring ideal type of epidemic drama in three acts, which he assembled from a vast knowledge of disease history that stretched from the end of the seventeenth century to his then-present pandemic, HIV/AIDS of the 1980s. Reaching back to the Plague of Athens, my essay elaborates on Rosenberg's dramaturgy by questioning whether blame, division, and collective violence were so universal or even the dominant "acts" of epidemics not only before the nineteenth century but to the present. Instead, with certain pandemics such as yellow fever in the Deep South or the Great Influenza of 1918–20, unity, mass volunteerism, and self-abnegation played leading roles. Finally, not all epidemics ended "with a whimper" as attested by the long early modern history of plague. These often concluded literally with a bang: lavish planning of festivals of thanksgiving, choreographed with processions, innumerable banners, commissions of paintings, ex-voto churches, trumpets, tambourines, artillery fire, and fireworks.

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Authors & Contributors
Alberto Luongo
Cilli, Elisabetta
Geddes da Filicaia, Marco
Traversari, Mirko
Biagini, Diletta
Tanturri, Alberto
Concepts
Public health
Epidemics
Plague
Medicine and society
Infectious diseases
Disease and diseases
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
18th century
17th century
Medieval
Early modern
Places
Italy
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Manchuria
Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
Québec (Canada)
South Africa
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