19세기 팬데믹과 영국소설: 킹즐리, 코렐리, 웰스의 경우 (The Nineteenth-Century Pandemic and the English Novel: The Cases of Kingsley, Corelli and Wells)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 영미문학연구회
· 수록지 정보 : 안과밖:영미문학연구 / 49호 / 64 ~ 89페이지
· 저자명 : 성은애

초록

This article, written in quarantine during the Covid-19 global pandemic, aims at examining some ‘cholera fictions’ of the late 19th century. Cholera in the 19th century, orientalized as ‘Indian plague’ or ‘Asiatic cholera,’ was feared for its ability to spread and for its deadly effects by the Europeans, but rarely used as a main subject matter in the plot of prose fiction. According to Sontag, cholera is a kind of disease which simplifies the individual’s complex self, reducing it to collective sickness, which makes it difficult to probe into the inner self of individuals. That’s why there are not so many ‘cholera novels’ produced during the Victorian cholera pandemic.
Charles Kingsley’s Two Years Ago, allegedly ‘the best cholera novel,’ is one of the rare works which depicts vividly the cholera pandemic of 1854, from the viewpoint of a young materialist surgeon Tom Thurnall, who fights cholera in Aberalba, a fictional English fishing village. Tom finds that political, economic, religious factors prevent the village from responding effectively. Marie Corelli’s Vendetta, set in the thick of the 1884 cholera in Naples, is a typical ‘Sensation Novel’ with a revenge plot. Fabio Romani, the narrator, buried alive for being considered dead of cholera, returns from the grave to seek revenge on his wife and his best friend for committing adultery. H. G. Wells’ “The Stolen Bacillus” is the first fiction in English to deal with ‘bioterror,’ caused by one who uses cholera bacillus to pollute the London’s water supply.
The change in the way to deal with cholera shown by the fictions of the late 19th century demonstrates that British people becomes more and more confident about preventing and controlling the disease, eventually containing it in the bacteriologist’s lab. And also, they show that controlling the epidemic relies more on political and economic situations, healthcare systems, mature civic awareness than on the discoveries of medical science.

영어초록

This article, written in quarantine during the Covid-19 global pandemic, aims at examining some ‘cholera fictions’ of the late 19th century. Cholera in the 19th century, orientalized as ‘Indian plague’ or ‘Asiatic cholera,’ was feared for its ability to spread and for its deadly effects by the Europeans, but rarely used as a main subject matter in the plot of prose fiction. According to Sontag, cholera is a kind of disease which simplifies the individual’s complex self, reducing it to collective sickness, which makes it difficult to probe into the inner self of individuals. That’s why there are not so many ‘cholera novels’ produced during the Victorian cholera pandemic.
Charles Kingsley’s Two Years Ago, allegedly ‘the best cholera novel,’ is one of the rare works which depicts vividly the cholera pandemic of 1854, from the viewpoint of a young materialist surgeon Tom Thurnall, who fights cholera in Aberalba, a fictional English fishing village. Tom finds that political, economic, religious factors prevent the village from responding effectively. Marie Corelli’s Vendetta, set in the thick of the 1884 cholera in Naples, is a typical ‘Sensation Novel’ with a revenge plot. Fabio Romani, the narrator, buried alive for being considered dead of cholera, returns from the grave to seek revenge on his wife and his best friend for committing adultery. H. G. Wells’ “The Stolen Bacillus” is the first fiction in English to deal with ‘bioterror,’ caused by one who uses cholera bacillus to pollute the London’s water supply.
The change in the way to deal with cholera shown by the fictions of the late 19th century demonstrates that British people becomes more and more confident about preventing and controlling the disease, eventually containing it in the bacteriologist’s lab. And also, they show that controlling the epidemic relies more on political and economic situations, healthcare systems, mature civic awareness than on the discoveries of medical science.

참고자료

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