After the Plague

By: Simon Doubleday, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Simon Doubleday

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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

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Meh

I have seen and listened to nearly 100 Great Courses. This one was possibly the least interesting.
The connection between the plague and its aftermaths presented are tedious and at times, a stretch.

A Good Breadth of Coverage

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.

Faulty Historical Assumptions

Professor Doubleday is very knowledgeable, but made the assumption that the social trends during and after the Black Death were just a continuation of previous societal and cultural trends. He claims that the Renaissance was not a result of the Black Death. It makes me wonder about his historical judgment.

Interesting

Interesting, but not as good or engaging as
Dorsey Armstrong’s course on the Black Death.

Excellent intro to European world after plague

This course will lead to my reading (listening to?) the canterberry tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and to sample other artists mentioned in this course. Too bad there is not a listing for follow up study. This course is an excellent introduction to the 14th century European world. This course explains that the post-plague era has a much to offer us in our own time. Volume 2 to come?

Black Death’s effects on literature and society

Narration is understandable.

Content of special interest to literature students and scholars, otherwise too esoteric for general reader

my least favorite of the Grat courses

I did expect a series of different discussions that what is here, so the author and I are at odds to a degree. No doubt there are some interesting lectures, but my mind does not make the same connections to 'after the plague' that Simon Doubleday does here. The epilogue in particular strikes me as relevant to the author, but I find it completely irrelevant. This happens with much of the material here Several chapters struck me as Doubleday showing his erudition, but, for me, he failed to link much of the material to the stated subject. On the other hand, in the chapter on Lollardy, Doubleday starts by discussing Chaucer, but fails to mention that Chaucer's patron and brother-in-law, John of Gaunt. was reputed to be a patron and protector of John Wycliffe. Something that I thought would be worth mentioning if only to dispute it.
So in my subjective opinion, a somewhat weak presentation with a mediocre lecturer. I recognized the cover as Bruegel's 'Icarus,' but the picture is cropped to leave a sinking Icarus out of view. Seemed like a portent of things to come for me.

Lengthy analysis of literature works

Author focuses very much on analysis of cultural aspect of the general period with loosely defined connections to actual Plague. Due to this, I find this course to be fragmented and lacking cohesive point. As the course progresses it is becoming harder and harder to understand author's intended connection to the Plague and it's consequences as the narrative becomes a simple description of event in particular area and period. Author's fascination with Geoffrey Chaucer doesn't help as well.