Story

While the pandemic ravages the city, wealthy urbanites flee to a secluded estate to hide in comfort—whether it’s 1348 and we’re talking about the protagonists of Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century masterpiece The Decameron, or it’s 2020 and we’re talking about the Manhattanites having their mail delivered to the Hamptons in limos.

As history repeats itself, so will art. Revisiting the books, stories, and paintings created after past plagues can help contextualize our lives under the specter of COVID-19—and predict the stories we may tell as a result. “Good writing about a plague is never just about the plague,” said Jennifer Wright, author of Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them. “It’s about the other social issues made manifest in times of plague. Angels in America is not just about AIDS, it’s not even just about how Reagan responded to AIDS. It’s about how Americans deal with the idea of our mortality.”

Similarly, The Decameron—in which characters pass time by telling each other stories—offers a multilayered commentary on its own time. The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe’s population, wiping out skilled workers in every trade, and leading to total social upheaval. “If you were a serf but could make a table, you suddenly had a new occupation, and no longer had to work for your lord and master,” Wright explained. “It created a level of social mobility that hadn’t been seen before.”

It also created a vacuum in the church. Clergymen who gave last rites to those struck by the plague wound up dying themselves. “So the church fills up with basically anybody who wants to apply,” said Wright, “and they’re not necessarily people leading Christ–like lives.”

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