When history f/needs fiction. The Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe.

Some medical historians suggest that the study of earlier pandemics can enhance our insight into the context of infectious diseases in the 21st century. Monica H Green, a professor of medical history, says that historical analysis of even the first plague pandemic can help our understanding of how disease moves today: “Bacterial pandemics are different to viral pandemics, but they still move to human populations. In terms of human activity and the way humans respond to threats and change, the study of ancient plagues can enrich our understanding of them”. Consequences of historical events are always unexpected. How does Humanity react to catastrophes? Pandemics are a constant in human history. On the one hand, they are a consequence of civilization, due to the demographic increase linked to the emergence of the first evolved societies and to the growing propensity of men to live in close contact in ever larger cities. On the other hand, they have contributed to shaping our history, sometimes causing disasters with age-old consequences, but also stimulating us to find more efficient means to prevent or moderate their effects. For this reason, the history of pandemics is full of useful suggestions to see the crisis caused by Covid-19 from the right perspective. Some of the feelings and human aspects of the Plague explored in A Journal of the Plague Year by William Defoe – fear, skepticism, pain, horror, hope, expectations – are what we have experienced ourselves during the last two years. Defoe was only five when the bubonic plague struck in London in 1665, yet, his account wants to be established as an example of verisimilitude, reinforced by primary sources such as the Bills of Mortality. Written in 1722, two years after the outbreak of plague in Marseilles, the text purports to offer an eyewitness account of the infestation’s progress and effects. However unsettling a detailed narrative of horrors the Journal may be, it is also an edifying tale of survival and of triumph, written to pique public interest and gain some money from the publication. The fictional character named H. Foe is there to give a faithful account of and interpret reality, trying to make the Londoners understand that English society can be better understood and lived by those who remain. My paper would be an attempt to re-establish the value of a text whose primary sources preserve and dig out again the importance of historical memory. How much fiction and how much history there is in this text is one major question that will be answered also in relation to Samuel Pepys’s Diary (1660-1669).