Resisting the Defeatism of Epidemic: A Critical Study of the Plague by Albert Camus

Abstract

Most plague texts have their genesis in fact. The Plague is no exception. Therefore, to study the aesthetics of plague literature—or more particularly, the aesthetic constructs of destiny in plague literature—is to examine the process by which the factual reality of plague is first perceived and then translated by an author into a literary reality. A process that begins in perception—and indeed, the ancient Greeks defined aesthetics as perception—thus ends in representation; the plague text re-presents plague’s fact.