Pandemic Protagonists: Viral (Re)Actions in Pandemic and Corona Fictions (2025)

Related papers

Pandemic Protagonists. Viral (Re)Actions in Pandemic and Corona Fictions. Conference Report

Elisabeth Hobisch

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023

The interdisciplinary conference entitled Pandemic Protagonists. Viral (Re)Actions in Pandemic and Corona Fictions was held as part of the Corona Fictions project 2 from June 1 st to June 3 rd , 2023, at Graz University of Technology. It marked the culmination of a year of joint work on the recently published volume of the same title 3 , which stood at the center of the conference. Within this framework, the organising committee 4 invited all scholars whose contributions had appeared in the volume.

View PDFchevron_right

From Pandemic to Corona Fictions: Narratives in Times of Crises

Yvonne Völkl, Albert Göschl, Julia Obermayr

in Marina O. Hertrampf: "Corona: crisis or change? How crises unsettle and change cultures.", PhiN, 24 (Beiheft), 2020

After the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic by the WHO on March 11, 2020, the corona crisis discourse quickly turned into a global pandemic crisis discourse. This discourse was and still is not limited to media and politics, but also penetrates into fictional productions constituting a new corpus, which can be subsumed under the term Corona Fictions. However, Corona Fictions pertain to a more generally assumed genre of pandemic fiction, i.e. literary and cultural productions, which rely strongly on the representation and functionalization of pandemics. Thus, Corona Fictions not only draw on everyday media and political discourse, but also on previous pandemic fiction. Analyzing Corona Fictions as part of pandemic fiction, this paper reveals parallel structures between pandemic narratives and the classical drama.

View PDFchevron_right

Corona Fictions Agents: Cinematic Representations of Hopeful Pandemic Protagonists in Early Corona Fictions

Julia Obermayr

Pandemic Protagonists

During the Covid-19 pandemic numerous early Corona Fictions (including films) emerged, creating a multitude of pandemic protagonists across media. The aim of this article is to examine these protagonists of two European Corona Fictions comedies: 8 Rue de l'Humanité (2021) and ¡Ni te me acerques! (2020). Applying Stuart Hall's (1997) circuit of culture lens (encoding/decoding model), as well as various concepts of hope (e.g.

View PDFchevron_right

We Are the Stories We Tell: Pandemic Narratives and COVID-19

Rudolf Sardi

2022

It is stating the obvious that the connection between fiction and pandemics runs impenetrably deep. The aim of the present paper is to provide a retrospective account of the import of pandemics (especially that of the plague at various points in history) in some notable works of literature and to survey its plausible kinship with new currents in the post-pandemic cultural and literary environment. In doing so, the essay strives to subject to critical assessment Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, Boccaccio's Decameron, and Camus's The Plague, where a mysterious pandemic is directly evoked. Additionally, the essay seeks to disclose the hypothetical "viral" subtexts of contagious diseases discernible in Virginia Woolf 's Mrs. Dalloway and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, written at a time when the Spanish flu of 1918-19 began to take its toll. In the last section, the essay will introduce a series of possible themes and genres which are likely to have a bearing on the literary scene as a direct consequence of the current pandemic.

View PDFchevron_right

The Saga of Pandemics through the Literary Lens

Abhay Chawla

Nusantara Journal of Behavioral and Social Sciences

Disease, illness and death have been a human being’s constant companion right from the dawn of civilization and Pandemics are a part of this fatal manifestation which has been witnessed century upon century, successfully wreaking havoc upon the unsuspecting mankind. A pandemic (from Greek - pan, meaning "all" and demos meaning "people") is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, spreading through continents and killing with impunity as it spreads. Throughout human history, there have been a number of pandemics of diseases such as smallpox and tuberculosis. The most fatal pandemic in recorded history was the Black Death (also known as The Plague), which killed an estimated 75–200 million people in the 14th century. Other notable pandemics include the 1918 pandemic, the Spanish influenza (Spanish flu). The current pandemics include Covid19 and HIV AIDS. The history of pandemic has been recorded meticulously by playwrights, noveli...

View PDFchevron_right

What we may learn – and need – from pandemic fiction

James Giordano

Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine

View PDFchevron_right

Literature and Pandemic: Are the Literary Characters really Motivating

Gurpreet Kaur

Quarantine, isolation, loneliness are some words we hear frequently in the Covid-19 pandemic situation. These bring with them nothing but questions about constant fear and existential crisis. There is anxiety, despair, hopelessness, and of course meaninglessness of existence. It is necessary to find a means of grasping the reality and gaining an ability to cope and heal mentally, physically, emotionally and socially. Researchers are working hard in providing prophylactics in the light of this novel yet not new viral pandemic. There are many philosophical questions which need to be answered so as to cope up in this situation like, constant fear of being affected, especially when among people; problem of self-isolation; selfalienation; not finding moral support during and after being affected from the disease; some citizens' selfinterest and immoral behavior. These problems are taking the psychological form. Literary works are replete with many such prevalent issues and problems. Literature has, since ages, been a means of escape from the reality as well as a strong and effective way of facing the reality in a rehabilitative manner. In this paper the aim is to read and reread some selected literary works which give glimpses similar to the current pandemic and study how the tragic literary heroes become role models and help finding answers to some questions on existential anxiety.

View PDFchevron_right

Spanish TV Fiction in Times of Pandemic. Nuclear and Transversal Stories About COVID-19

Patricia Palomares-Sánchez

ILUMINACE , 2023

2020 marked an unprecedented change in the world population, social relationships, and cultural consumption itself. The outbreak of COVID-19 not only distanced people, families, and countries but also had many consequences on how we relate to each other. In this context, television was one of the sources of communication, entertainment, and bonding that resonated the most in times of crisis. Th is research aims to provide an in-depth study of the Spanish TV and VOD series born in the context of the pandemic to show how the discourse of COVID-19 has gone through the ways of consumption and entertainment and also through the fi ctional narratives. A content analysis of the series released since the beginning of the health crisis in March 2020 is carried out in order to establish formal, narrative, and other aspects of pandemic stories. Th e study intends to demonstrate that COVID-19 has become a discernible theme in Spanish television, both as a narrative core and as a transversal motif in subsequent productions.

View PDFchevron_right

The Positive Impact of Pandemics in Two Selected Speculative Narratives

mahmoud alshraah

Theory and Practice in Language Studies

This article examines Stephen Soderbergh’s film Contagion (2011) and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014) as a critique of the uncivilized culture of our modern society, which depends on fragile connections and lack of solidarity. Although global pandemics annihilate the world and shatter families, this study demonstrates how they are depicted as a positive tool of change, serving as a force that exposes then undermines the deep-rooted cultural flaws in society and finally offers lessons that help in rebuilding a new civilized world based on human values. Such representation of pandemics in these selected narratives is allegorical, functioning as a mirror that reflects our COVID-19 reality, teaching moral lessons, and contributing to our understanding of the crisis and how we think and act in response.

View PDFchevron_right

Pandemics in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction: Rethinking the (Post)Human

Tânia Cerqueira

SFRA Review, 2021

Following the worldwide popularity of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy (2008-2010), dystopian narratives took the young adult publishing world by storm. The subsequent dystopian boom in young adult literature offered readers dreadful new worlds that emerged from the ashes of contemporary society after it was destroyed by violent wars, climate change, deadly contagious diseases, and the like.As is widely understood (and some people still pretend to ignore), our society is currently facing an infectious disease that is straining the social order. Young adult dystopian literature has often represented the consequences of a pandemic – some of which consequences we are currently facing as a society today. From novels published at the beginning of this century, such as The Way We Fa l l by Megan Crewe (2002) and The Last Dog on Earth by Daniel Ehrenhaft (2003), to works like The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch (2011), Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin (2012-2013), and This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada (2017-2020), to highlight a few, this literature has explored the loss of human life, the paranoia caused by the fear of being infected, the struggle to find a cure, and how the infection (or the cure) can alter the human body – the body might evolve or retrogress, changing in ways such that it is no longer defined as human.This essay discusses how pandemics and their effects on the human body are represented in recent young adult dystopian texts through the lens of posthuman studies. My analysis will focus on three young adult series: James Dashner’s The Maze Runner trilogy (2009-2011), Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles (2012-2015), and Rory Power’s Wilder Girls (2019). In these works, the characters are confronted with the consequences of a viral outbreak, including zombie-like creatures and “unnatural” bodily changes. Due to these bodily changes, one can affirm that the infection provoked by the viral outbreak and/or cure creates posthuman bodies – bodies that threaten social norms by being different from the rule—forcing the reader to rethink what it actually means to be human and deconstructing the dominant idea implemented by the humanist worldview, where humanity is disconnected from the surrounding world.

View PDFchevron_right

Pandemic Protagonists: Viral (Re)Actions in Pandemic and Corona Fictions (2025)

References

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Eusebia Nader

Last Updated:

Views: 5370

Rating: 5 / 5 (80 voted)

Reviews: 95% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Eusebia Nader

Birthday: 1994-11-11

Address: Apt. 721 977 Ebert Meadows, Jereville, GA 73618-6603

Phone: +2316203969400

Job: International Farming Consultant

Hobby: Reading, Photography, Shooting, Singing, Magic, Kayaking, Mushroom hunting

Introduction: My name is Eusebia Nader, I am a encouraging, brainy, lively, nice, famous, healthy, clever person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.