After The Plague

by Simon Doubleday

10 hours and 24 minutes

As the Black Death swept across Europe, killing up to a half of the population in certain areas, a young Geoffrey Chaucer came of age in England. While he and his family avoided the worst of the disease, all were shaped by its presence and impact on the British island. In fact, Chaucer’s most famous work shines light on a complex period underwritten by trauma and tragedy, without ever explicitly mentioning the bubonic plague by name. Through its characters, themes, and stories, The Canterbury Tales is a portal into medieval Europe and can thus be a useful tool in expanding our knowledge and challenging our assumptions about what life was truly like in plague times.

With expert Simon Doubleday, professor of history at Hofstra University, in After the Plague, examine medieval literature like The Canterbury Tales for firsthand accounts from minority voices not typically heard from in the period. Learn of historical arguments to see how the outbreak of disease reshaped the continent for good. Start by exploring “pre-plague” Europe: a place that, despite popular belief, was neither backwards nor isolated. Learn about the continent’s key global connections, many of which hastened the spread of disease. Dive into medieval innovations in science, medicine, public health, and disaster responses that helped prime and prepare European institutions and leadership for what was to come. And challenge your preconceived notions of what everyday life was like for women, children, minority groups, and families leading up to the outbreak.

Then, get to know the Black Death as a disease—its pathology, symptoms, and population-level impact and effects of the plague experience. Map its destructive path from densely packed cities in England to Jewish enclaves in Spain. Go even broader to investigate the social, political, and economic realities of the plague era and how medieval Europeans from Chaucer’s fictional characters to peasant revolutionaries made sense of and responded to them. And understand how human resilience, a remarkable quality that transcends time and place, functions in the face of widespread tumult and trauma.

Genres: History, Audiobook, Nonfiction, Historical, Medieval, British Literature

11 pages, Audible Audio

Published March 25, 2022

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Churchill once said, “Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it.” But, I think maybe we also learn history as a reminder that we are not alone. That’s how I’d describe the first half of these lectures—thoughtful, insightful, and rather beautiful.

Unfortunately, the second half really just retells the entirety of The Canterbury Tales. That was rather disappointing.

[Leftbanker · Rating 1 out of 5]

I listen to these lectures on my bike rides, and I have to say that this is the worst of the bunch so far. He keeps asking these silly, unanswerable questions like, “Did law and order break down after the plague?” while responding with “Perhaps.” If I were sitting in his class at a university, I’d stand up and leave. “Were conditions in London unsanitary in 1348 when the plague struck the city?” He’ll answer by giving an account in which a man was fined for throwing his chamber pot out the window into the street.

If this only happened once or twice, I could see past this laziness, but the course is built on some very flimsy extrapolations from scant historical data. Unfortunately, I had to listen to a lot more of this than I cared to because it’s all I had on my MP3 player, and it was a very long ride.

[Dave Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but disappointing

The good points: disabused me of the ideas I'd heard that the Black Death caused sweeping social changes and helped lead to the Renascence.

The bad points: disabused me of the ideas I'd heard that the Black Death caused sweeping social changes and helped lead to the Renascence.

Ha Ha. but more seriously...
This is a good lecture series, but it focuses primarily on The Arts. Literature, painting, and poetry.
I really wanted to read how the Plague changed society in a socioeconomic way. What I got was how the trauma of the Plague effected artists.
(with some socioeconomic footnotes)

[Alina GWEN Rodriguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title is a little misleading. It should read Chaucer after the plague, given the heavy focus on him.

[Kimbot the Destroyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice to learn stuff sometimes. Makes me want to deep dive into Alfonso the Wise.
*audio*

[Siv30 · Rating 5 out of 5]

לסקירה מפורטת בעברית ואנגלית קישור לבלוג שלי -

https://sivi-the-avid-reader.com/afte...

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are definitely chapters here that are fascinating and worth reading. A few others that were boring or I know they are leaving out information I've read from other sources. Worth the time, if only because the chapters are rather short and move along at a good pace.

[Dennis Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the Plague by Simon Doubleday is not actually about what happened after the Plague. If you're approaching this course as a way to learn the history of the plague, or about the aftermath of the plague in Europe, then you will be disappointed. It is more accurate to call this "Living with the Plague." The course is bookended by Chaucer, and we are left with many individual accounts and literary references to guide us through what it would have meant to suffer and live in a time when so much of the world was dying off. While interesting, this feels like lived experience-based historical sociology. Apart from the widest of arcs, you're mostly reveling in anecdotal stories and the generalizations that can be derived from them with history serving as the backdrop. While fine, its not exactly for me. While I do like social history, I want it to be sandwiched in some kind of narrative progression. Here, I'm not sure we move anywhere. We just simply sit and become exposed to some rather fluffy accounts of what it means to endure, survive, and even thrive during and between outbreaks.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating, artful, and nuanced view of the portion of the Middle Ages occurring after the plague. The author delves deeply into Chaucer, Boccaccio, and others, almost to the degree that I wish this had been previewed as a "literary" exploration of the era. It does add to the historical perspective of it all. It was interesting to learn how widespread the plague was, affecting Asia, the Middle East, and Africa as well. The lectures on the plague and the Jewish and Muslim worlds were quite unique and interesting. One of his themes is that people from the medieval era were not as primitive or superstitious as we might tend to think, in their religion, medicine, etc. But he overstates his case to a significant degree in pursuit of his emphasis. It was interesting to learn how little the plague was mentioned in the literature of the day, whether from trauma or shared cultural assumption (the plague was simply a "given").

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Great Courses work spends about 25% of its length describing the Black Death and the rest looking at parts of Europe afterwards. There’s an effort made to connect the evolution of culture, literature, religion, and the economy to the trauma of the Black Death. Parts are very powerful, such as the exploration of the grief medieval parents felt when they lost a child. (This is especially important because there was a popular—if idiotic—idea in the historiography a hundred years ago that medieval parents couldn’t have loved their children like modern parents do because the high child mortality rates would have made it impossible to function if they had.) Overall, I was pleased with the breadth of Doubleday’s look at medieval society, but I didn’t really feel like he brought anything new to the table.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the best of the great courses on history I've listened to, and not really what I was looking for, but I did find a few interesting tidbits.

This felt much more focused on the middle to upper classes and their art and literature than I had hoped for. Yes, this is a reflection of broader social happenings, but it is a limited range of sources. I appreciated the attempts to explore different parts of Europe as well as the Jewish and Muslim communities therein, but at the same time, it almost felt like too much was trying to be covered at the expense of nothing really getting to a level of detail I would like.

But, it's reminded me to read the decameron, so that's good.

[Francis X DuFour · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author leaves no stone unturned in his effort to describe the Black Plague’s influence on … well, everything that followed. No nationality, social class, profession, sex or religious affiliation escapes examination.

[Georgiana · Rating 2 out of 5]

The lecturer's enthusiasm for the late medieval world was very evident... and soon became very tedious. I eventually skipped to the chapters on Islamic and Jewish experiences, and then gave up. Life's just too short.

[Alberto · Rating 3 out of 5]

The individual lectures are repetitive and rambling. At the level of the entire course, it's even worse. What is the course even about? Is it a literature course, a history course, a sociology course? It's none of those to any worthwhile extent.

[Jack Slaughter · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much as I liked this guy’s reading voice and some of the stories of the post-plague medieval world, a lot of this book was way too focused on England and the life of Geoffrey Chaucer. But yeah good info and I learned some stuff.

[Sanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

10 ore și 24 de minute foarte interesante despre Evul Mediu și toată complexitatea lui.

În timp ce mișc prin casă sau afară, căștile și cărțile/cursurile audio sunt o mare bucurie. Nu ascult radio și nu mă uit la tv, deci nu este un efort🙂

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bogged down in spots

[Brad · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Was not all that impressed.

[Mak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audio. The lecturer made some questionable leaps in his analysis.