Journaling in the Plague Year

In Aristotle’s Politics, it is noted the human capability of speech is a defining factor that separates humans from animals. All language comes from the ability to perceive and use common nouns. Humans can identify things and arrange them according to a purpose. From this ability, humans were able to evolve this gift into something we all share: the ability to tell stories. Mythologies, sagas, or fictional texts, this assemblage of “common nouns” act as vehicles to communicate a type of understanding of the world.

With this in mind, it becomes almost a natural reaction for humans to write, conceptualize, and tell stories about their environment when yielded with uncertainty. For example, in the 14th century, the “Black Death,” or the bubonic plague swept across Europe. Due to this pandemic, many literary works were created. Perhaps the most notable is Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. This work is a frame story containing 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men sheltering in a secluded villa just outside Florence to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city. Although the work was deemed a “wives’ tale,” some scholars conclude that these stories were actual accounts of life.

Another work, A Journal of the Plague Year is a book by Daniel Defoe. It is an account of one man’s experiences of the year 1665, in which the bubonic plague struck the city of London. While researchers still debate the validity of the work itself, the piece acts like a telescope into the memory of a man who existed during a time of uncertainty.

As we progress day-by-day through our current pandemic of COVID-19, the poetry, screenplays, and literary passages I read on social media have brought a great deal of comfort and unexpected reverence. We continue to consciously, or subconsciously, create and process change in the same ways as in generations past. Whether it is for yourself, family, or to write the next Decameron, I encourage you to preserve your story. Someone someday will ask about your experiences during this pandemic.

Tory Schendel Cox 

The Virginia G. Schroeder Curator of Art