頁籤選單縮合
| 題 名 | Alarums and Excursions: Plague and Its Fictions |
|---|---|
| 作 者 | Moody,Nickianne; | 書刊名 | Tamkang Review |
| 卷 期 | 31:1 民89.秋 |
| 頁 次 | 頁73-94 |
| 分類號 | 873.57 |
| 關鍵詞 | Diegesis; Disaster narrative; Corruption; Conspiracy; Epidemic disease; Ecosystems; Ecological anxiety; Black Death; Eschatological warning; Dystopia; Mythology of plague; Obsolescence; Post-holocaust world; Plague; |
| 語 文 | 英文(English) |
| 英文摘要 | Plague has been a popular subject for speculative fiction throughout the twentieth century, especially as a convention to depopulate the world and consider new social arrangements. At the turn of the present century, plague is a consistent component of the near future diegesis. Plague becomes part of the background to the post-holocaust world. It is perceived as an ongoing experience and occurrence and its metaphorical use is connected to visualisations of obsolescence, ecological anxiety, capitalist logic and spiritual concerns. In other genres such as historical romance in the 1980s, plague is a mechanism of social mobility. Here it is a natural, God-given, horrible, but transient experience. This account of plague sees it as survivable and the consequences of survival become the focus of the story. Plague is a way of achieving social change, especially social mobility. By the 1990s, the plague scenario was still attractive, but it had become mediated to encompass anxieties around highlevel conspiracies. Plague and fatal epidemic disease were consequences of scientific, military and political decision-making to which the victim of the plague had little access. It thus becomes a contingent event which must be averted either by collective or individual heroic effort. The narrative therefore becomes much more of a thriller, to uncover the crime which set the potential of fatal epidemic disease in motion. At this point, the plague is often displaced and narrative attention focuses upon the exposure of fictional medical, business or scientific malpractice. Plague can therefore become a fictional convention for extrapolating high level and commonplace corruption, ethical dilemmas, exploitative practices and the formal/informal intricacies of international relations, economics and ecosystems. In the thriller, plague is an ambivalent entity often seen as a necessary evil. A first warning allows us to mend our ways. As well as the consequence of scientific advances, malpractice and corporate economics, plague is also seen in a variety of narratives as the logical, but unforeseen, consequence to a dependence on technology, e.g., Tepper’s A Plague of Angels, Piercey’s He, She ＆ It, Longo’s film version of “Johnny Mnemonic” and Patrick Lynch’s novel Carriers. However, in rare instances it is humanity’s salvation and it becomes a metaphor for transition both physically and materially or in terms of attitude and worldview. This paper looks at the contemporary mythology of plague in popular fiction. It aims to explore the meaning of plague in its eschatological manifestation either as savior or destroyer. |
本系統中英文摘要資訊取自各篇刊載內容。