Camus's The Plague: Philosophical Perspectives

257 Pages·2023·16.792 MB·English

by  Peg Brand Weiser

Camus’s The Plague
OXFORD STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY AND
LITERATURE
Richard Eldridge, Philosophy, Swarthmore College
editorial board
Anthony J. Cascardi, Comparative Literature, Romance, Languages, and
Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley
David Damrosch, Comparative Literature, Harvard University
Moira Gatens, Philosophy, University of Sydney
Garry Hagberg, Philosophy, Bard College
Philip Kitcher, Philosophy, Columbia University
Joshua Landy, French and Comparative Literature, Stanford University
Toril Moi, Literature, Romance Studies, Philosophy, and Theater Studies,
Duke University
Martha C. Nussbaum, Philosophy and Law School, University of Chicago
Bernard Rhie, English, Williams College
David Wellbery, Germanic Studies, Comparative Literature, and
Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago
Paul Woodruff, Philosophy and Classics, University of Texas at Austin
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Camus’s The Plague: Philosophical Perspectives
Edited by Peg Brand Weiser
Camus’s The Plague
Philosophical Perspectives
EDITED BY PEG BRAND WEISER
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Weiser, Peg Brand, author.
Title: Camus’s The plague : philosophical perspectives / edited by Peg Brand Weiser.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023] |
Series: Oxford studies in philosophy and literature | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022038837 (print) | LCCN 2022038838 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197599334 (paperback) | ISBN 9780197599327 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780197599358 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Camus, Albert, 1913-1960. Peste. | Philosophy in literature. |
Epidemics in literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism. | Essays.
Classification: LCC PQ2605 .A3734 P4394 2023 (print) | LCC PQ2605 .A3734 (ebook) |
DDC 843/.914—dc23/eng/20220916
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022038837
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022038838
DOI: 10.1093/o so/ 9780197599327.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
Triumph of Death.
From: Francesco Petrarca, “I Trionfi” (The Triumphs). Miniature. Neapolitan School, 1449–1460
Tempera and gold on parchment.
Ms. It. 103 alfa W 925, Folio 30v
Alfredo Dagli Orti / Art Resource, NY
This volume is dedicated to the millions of lives lost from Covid- 19,
to those who tried to save them,
and to the loved ones left behind.
Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.
We slowly drove—H e knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—
We passed the School where Children strove
At Recess— in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—
Or rather— He passed us—
The Dews drew quivering and Chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet— only Tulle—
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible —
The Cornice— in the Ground—
Since then— ‘tis Centuries—a nd yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity—
— Emily Dickinson (1830–1 886)
Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Contributors xv
Introduction: The Relevance of Camus’s The Plague 1
Peg Brand Weiser
1. T he Plague and the Present Moment 31
Steven G. Kellman
2. Present in Effacement: The Place of Women in
Camus’s Plague and Ours 53
Jane E. Schultz
3. The Meaning of a Pandemic 77
Andrew Edgar
4. Grief and Human Connection in The Plague 103
Kathleen Higgins
5. Examining the Narrative Devolution of the Physician
in Camus’s The Plague 127
Edward B. Weiser
6. Horror and Natural Evil in The Plague 147
Cynthia A. Freeland
7. “I Can’t Breathe”: Covid-1 9 and The Plague’s Tragedy
of Political and Corporeal Suffocation 175
Margaret E. Gray
8. Modern Death, Decent Death, and Heroic Solidarity
in The Plague 199
Peg Brand Weiser
Index 225

Series Editor’s Foreword
At least since Plato had Socrates criticize the poets and attempt to
displace Homer as the authoritative articulator and transmitter of
human experience and values, philosophy and literature have de-
veloped as partly competing, partly complementary enterprises.
Both literary writers and philosophers have frequently studied
and commented on each other’s texts and ideas, sometimes with
approval, sometimes with disapproval, in their efforts to become
clearer about human life and about valuable commitments—m oral,
artistic, political, epistemic, metaphysical, and religious, as may be.
Plato’s texts themselves register the complexity and importance of
these interactions in being dialogues in which both deductive argu-
mentation and dramatic narration do central work in furthering a
complex body of views.
While these relations have been widely recognized, they have also
frequently been ignored or misunderstood, as academic disciplines
have gone their separate ways within their modern institutional
settings. Philosophy has often turned to science or mathematics as
providing models of knowledge; in doing so, it has often explicitly set
itself against cultural entanglements and literary devices, rejecting,
at least officially, the importance of plot, figuration, and imagery in
favor of supposedly plain speech about the truth. Literary study has
moved variously through formalism, structuralism, poststructur-
alism, and cultural studies, among other movements, as modes of
approach to a literary text. In doing so, it has understood literary
texts as sample instances of images, structures, personal styles, or
failures of consciousness, or it has seen the literary text as a largely
fungible product, fundamentally shaped by wider pressures and
patterns of consumption and expectation that affect and figure in