Plague Theme in Western Novels

Plague has an intimate relationship with humans: it not only affects the social process but also has a profound impact on people's cultural and spiritual state. The plague is an important theme of literature and many world masterpieces take plague as their background. The plague in the Middle Ages accelerated the Renaissance and the Reformation. Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron is famous for taking plague as the background. It highlights the value of the Renaissance and the inevitability of Reformation. The 18th-century Enlightenment literature described the world with objective and rational manners. British writer Daniel Defoe's novel A Journal of the Plague Year stressed this tendency. French writer Giono's novel The Horseman on the Roof and the Colombian writer Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera put plague and love together, the love story dazzling with the plague. In the novel The Plague written by Albert Camus, the plague has a broader symbolism and different choices when people face plague is the expression of existential philosophy.