A Journal of the Plague Year, written by a citizen who continued all the while in London

5 Responses to “A Journal of the Plague Year, written by a citizen who continued all the while in London”

1. Mark Twain says:

   June 22, 2010 at 10:19 am

   This book is obviously filled with conceits from the very beginning. Daniel Defoe tries to make the reader to feel that he was acctualy there, which is impossible because the events took place hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and the only person who was alive then and is still alive now is JESUS CHRIST! Certianly not some HACK from GODDLESSNESSLAND, USA, I mean hollywood. I guess being an actor, Mr. Defoe is used to living lies made flesh, but it still is very tiresome the way that he pretends to have witnessed the events he writes about in this book. What a worn out, tired ancient cliched way of writing. I shouldnt be supprised, since Defoe had the NERVE to take the ROLE OF JESUS CHRIST THE PRINCE OF LOVE AND PEACE in the peice of trash talking blasphemy THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST!!!! Taking on such a role displays a HUGE lack of both imagination and TACT!! He and the filmmakers and in fact, all of hollywood should be agreed the BOOT for their BLASPHEMIES and for their routine practice of corrupting the minds of our once GREAT notion’s CHILDREN!
   
   Then, to top it all off, in the commentary and appendixes the editors spectacle their oblivious LIBERAL BIASES by including two totaly pointless and off the theme essays about AIDS!!! Books like these are in school libraries all over the country- I dont want my children reading that! Nor do I want additional peoples’ children that! The LIBERAL MEDIA make me gag!!!!
   
   This boo should be banned from school libraries, and in fact, from all libraries.
   Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
2. J Parreira says:

   June 22, 2010 at 1:07 pm

   This is reasonably an appealing book. Looks pretty much like television journalism in a time the concept was not yet developed. It is very realistic and it looks like the leader was really present went the tale happened, when in fact he wrote the whole thing many years after. Another appealing aspect regarding this book is that it “constructed” in a sense, our imaginary regarding middle ages epidemics. The descriptions are so plain that they were used many, many times in the movies, paintings and additional fictional pieces to characterise this kind of situations. Just for the sake of curiosity, one can read Noah Gordon’s “The Physiscian” or watch the movie “Interview with the Vampire” (pay attention to the episode of the epidemics in New Orleans), to see that Defoe’s influence came a long way through. Excellent read!
   Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
3. steve says:

   June 22, 2010 at 2:58 pm

   I liked the book. It was very factual and helped a fantastic deal with research. It contains many accounts of the Plague.
   Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
4. Peter Payne says:

   June 22, 2010 at 5:19 pm

   Since Daniel Defoe was only four years ancient in 1664, A Journal of the Plague Year is a novel rather than a journal. It was written as a pamphlet to warn people of what to expect and how best to defend themselves should another plague strike. What makes any book written in the distant past appealing is the glimpse it affords into the mentality of the people of the time. This was the plague that caused Isaac Newton place London for the country, where he purportedly ongoing the work that led to the invention of calculus and the laws of gravity. We can see the struggle between clear thinking and self-destructive superstition in the thoughts of Defoe’s character.

   On the one hand he insists the plague is doubtless “stroke from Heaven, a messenger of His vengeance, and a loud call to repentance,” but in the next paragraph he understands that the plague arises from natural causes, propagated by natural means.” So he concludes that God is using natural causes to exact his vengeance, even though he also says he must be allowed to judge than all who got sick received it in the ordinary way of infection. So he speaks disparagingly of fatalistic Christians, and especially Moslems, who snub simple safety precautions because they are convinced that only persons whom God wishes to will get the plague. Though convinced that the plague is God’s way of punishing the wicked, he acknowledges that it strikes the excellent and wicked alike, and the wicked were just as likely to survive as the excellent. When the plague finally ends, he is convinced that nothing but God could have finished it – not even the worst of people could have doubted this. He seems surprised by man’s unthankfulness and the return of all manner of wickedness soon after the plague. Presumably, the average people of the time really felt that they deserved to die arbitrarily of an dreadful disease, and after living with the horror of seeing friends and family tree die agonizing deaths, that they should feel thankful that God had not done the same to them. Thankfully, science has place an end to this kind of superstition. Right, some people still cling to this hideous notion of God, but while we can respect Defoe as an unusually intelligent man of his time, any writer with such thoughts today would be happily dismissed as a crank.
   
   (Peter Payne, leader of CAPTAIN CALIFORNIA BATTLES THE BEELZEBUBIAN BEASTS OF THE BIBLE)
   Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
5. Angela J. Davidson says:

   June 22, 2010 at 6:19 pm

   Although fictional, “Journal” provides a to some extent past bird’s eye view into the tragedy of the plague that affected Londoners for a period of a year. The book is appealing and detailed, and qualifies itself as one of the earliest known Novels. DeFoe is most recognizable for Robinson Crusoe, written in 1719.
   Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5