The plague and European intellectual and literary development

Abstract

This thesis will attempt to describe how the second pandemic influenced various areas of life in Europe from roughly the middle of the fourteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century. No national barriers will be drawn because of the difficulty of confining the various influences to single nations. Particularly with the humanists it is impossible to pin them down to one area of influence: they traveled from one country to another and felt at home in many places. First it will be explained briefly how the plague spread over wide parts of Europe as it is known to historians today. Then this essay will shortly explain how the plague was seen, described and treated in those days. A description of the plague's influence on the daily lives of the scholars, the clergy and the common man will be the next part of this essay. After that a discussion as to the influence on actual works of literature will be given. In the conclusion of this paper the vast general influences of the plague on the development of European life will be discussed.