Read more
This volume provides a literary-cum-historiographical analysis of epidemics and pandemics. It looks at folklores, tribal folktales, eyewitness accounts, memoirs, and missionary writings from India and the West to explore the history of some of the major outbreaks in history.
List of contents
Part I: Popular Responses, Rumours and Political Resentments 1. Imagining an Epidemic: Literary Representation of Plague in Colonial Bengal 2. Plague, British Intervention, and Variegated Indigenous Responses in Colonial Lahore 3. The Plague Epidemic in Bombay and Poona, 1896-97: Perceptions of the Contemporary Print Media 4. Echoes of Drumbeat of Life: An Exploration into Hindi Literature on Epidemics Part II: Social Transgressions and Changing Human Relations 5. Pandemic Poetry: Tropes and Transgressions 6. Pandemics, Literature and Re-visions of Society 7. Pandemics: Time to Die, Time to Love 8. Epidemics, Fascism, Absurdity and Resistance: Albert Camus’s The Plague 9. The Rajrog: Reflections on Tuberculosis in Bengali Literature Part III: Divine Punishment, Dislocations and Agonies 10. Epidemics in Tribal Folklore: Sub-Himalayan Bengal in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 11. Divine Punishment and Beyond: Epidemics and the Survey of Urdu Fiction 12. The Pandemic: A Literary Perspective 13. Memories of the Unforeseen: Epidemics, Graveyard and Religion in Malayalam Literature 14. Metaphorising an Epidemic: Khalid Jawed’s Ek Khanjar Paani Mein (A Dagger in Water)
About the author
Kamlesh Mohan is an emeritus professor of modern history at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India.
Saurav Kumar Rai is Research Officer at Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, New Delhi, India.
Summary
This volume provides a literary-cum-historiographical analysis of epidemics and pandemics. It looks at folklores, tribal folktales, eyewitness accounts, memoirs, and missionary writings from India and the West to explore the history of some of the major outbreaks in history.
