Since the coronavirus outbreak, journalists, creative writers, and literary scholars have been increasingly publishing articles reflecting on how past periods of literature have addressed the topic and reality of pandemics, plagues, and disease. One of the more popular works of American literature that has recently gained renewed critical attention is Edgar Allan Poe’s famous short story, “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842). Here are a few examples of these articles, if you are interested:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2738525/https://slate.com/culture/2020/03/edgar-allan-poes-masque-of-the-red-death-is-an-allegory-for-the-age-of-coronavirus.htmlhttps://www.crisismagazine.com/2020/the-masque-of-the-coronavirusFor this discussion forum post, I would like for you to reflect on what thematic similarities you see between Poe’s tale and our current historical situation dealing with the socioeconomic and ethical reality of coronavirus. By the 1840s, Poe’s America was one in which disease was rampant, pervasive, and devastating. Without vaccines and modern forms of medicine, diseases like cholera, yellow fever, tuberculosis, and typhoid fever ravaged American society, killing untold numbers of Americans at relatively young ages. In fact, the average lifespan in antebellum America (1800-1850) was 37 years old (https://www.legacy.com/life-and-death/the-antebellum-era.html). However, as might be expected, an individual’s class, race, and socioeconomic status greatly influenced one’s expected mortality rate. How, then, might we understand Poe’s story here and the rest of his literary work’s fascination with death and decay as a reflection on a larger cultural fact of American society? How is Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death” a reflection on the relationship between disease, class, and morbidity? In what ways do you see Poe’s short story relevant to the situation in which we find ourselves, in 2020?
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