In Japan they have a celebration, Shichi-Go-San, when girls reach 3 and 7, and boys 3 and 5. It started as a celebration for kids surviving to those ages, and not succumbing to disease. You only talked about Europe, but diseases (and story telling) are across the globe.

I’ve been binging your work this is past week, and as someone who teaches English, I am ABSOLUTELY in love with your work! Thank you for posting such great content, I feel like I’m back in my favorite college classes!

@vertov76

2 ай бұрын

I was just thinking this watching this video. I'm pretty much down with any literary or historical topic you want to talk about. You're really good at this.

@Jess_of_the_Shire

2 ай бұрын

I'm so glad you're enjoying my videos! You're so kind

my brother got a pet rat when we were kids. such smart, cool little guys. if only they lived longer

@Jess_of_the_Shire

2 ай бұрын

They're lovely pets, even if they do have such short lives

@emmitstewart1921

9 күн бұрын

@@Jess_of_the_Shire Actually, in the US, you are more likely to catch the plague from a squirrel than from a rat.

Stories, history, analyses - Entertainment, education and engagement - You have a *very* special talent. I'm pretty sure you could read aloud a train timetable and the audience would feel better for hearing it and go away with a smile 😊

During the pandemic we also saw a sizable growth in people discovering D&D and TTRPGs in general for the exact reasons you've described; a need for community (virtually in many cases) and turning to shared story-telling as a form of escapism.

As a German I was of course aware or the passion plays of Oberammergau - but I did not know about the connection with the plague. So thanks for teaching me about German history 😉!

@Jess_of_the_Shire

2 ай бұрын

It's a pleasure! Thanks for watching!

Ah, I remember when my studies on the Black Plague and pandemics were purely academic and not personal. Great video, as always, Jess! Happy Easter!

“It spread across Europe like wildfire.” It spread across Europe like the plague

@ABrit-bt6ce

2 ай бұрын

Oddly the Americas caught a dose when Europeans got there. All good fun until someone Extraterestreal gets near the public.

Love your content

@Jess_of_the_Shire

2 ай бұрын

Thanks so much!

I'm very happy to see your channel becoming more rounded in discussing the many aspects of popular literature. Knowing the context of the times in which a work was created is necessary for the proper understanding of the author's mindset and intent, and the thematic influences which they may not have even intended to include, but are present nevertheless. The Plague is a particularly important event in relation to our modern "medievalish" sensibilities towards fantasy, as it was hugely responsible for ushering in the age of Merrie Olde England, and all that it evokes in our imaginations.

@Jess_of_the_Shire

2 ай бұрын

Thanks! I've really been enjoying getting to branch out a bit.

@sebastianevangelista4921

2 ай бұрын

@@Jess_of_the_Shire We've all been enjoying it too 👍.

Is that a fur baby hammock?!? OMG it IS!!!!

@Jess_of_the_Shire

2 ай бұрын

Yep! It's a little sling for the guys. They hang out in there sometimes (as long as treats are involved)

@HectorRoldan

2 ай бұрын

@@Jess_of_the_ShireWhat if you made a hoodie with the Shire on it and they get to be Hobbits popping out of different Houses around the outfit?!? We have a nest out back where I'm moving from and some of them race around the trees having fun and if I didn't have moving constraints, I'd adopt them for relocation and testing new cloths and how well they can teach robots or something. I cheesed out on one of them with Fuzzywinks but its been my favorite since it squeaks more than the rest of them so I wanted to single it out in case it associated with my encouragement at not falling from the trees though I sometimes wish they wouldn't since they fall down and that messes with my emotions..

Good story! I was nibbling on cheese doodles when you started describing the plaque, thank goodness for a medical background! I think because before the invention of writing we remembered our history through storytelling, it just may be ingrained in our racial memories. I know it makes me feel better to tell a story or to listen to the cadence of a storytellers voice. As you say, this may not have been in the same vein as most of your topics but, let's face it, without storytellers your topics wouldn't exist. I'm glad you are part of the tradition of storytelling!

@Jess_of_the_Shire

2 ай бұрын

Haha, I'm not sure I'd condone snacking while watching this one. Thank you for your kind words and for watching!

@RingsLoreMaster

2 ай бұрын

I thought you were going to write something about cheese Doodles and rats.

I have deep admiration for your work and passionate narration miss Jess 💙 respect from Croatia Europe 😇😇😇💙💙💙(God bless you and your work young lady)💜💜💜

I don't know if the 1918 flu pandemic left many opportunities for telling stories. It was of such swift onset and terrifying virulency. There was only one major work of literature produced by the pandemic: "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" by Katherine Ann Porter. OTOH, Albert Camus The Plague (Le Peste) is an account of a bubonic plague outbreak in Oran in 1943. (And Yes, I did read it when CoVID was running amok).

Fun little thing about plague arrows: in Anglo-Saxon and Medieval England certain aches, pains and illnesses were blamed on 'elf shot', evidence of which was seen in the many Stone Age flint arrowheads littered about the country

I was about to rail about the creative boost some lucky souls received during lockdown, because I spent those months too anxious and fearful to do feel much creative drive at all...... and then I remembered that I actually wrote my longest story ever over the course of that summer, and it was, in part, an excuse to think and daydream and share all the things I missed about summer that I couldn't experience that year. Larping events, swimming in the river with friends, going out to eat, even just inviting a friend over to binge a show together. It was a very lonely summer, but that story is a love letter to camaraderie and connection. It kept me afloat. Thanks for this video.

I thank the faeries (and the algorithm) for introducing me to this channel. I spent the whole day watching your videos and they are glorious, Jess. You made this Brazillian fantasy fan a happy dude. 😊

Interesting departure Jess. Thinking of plague stories I have to share the story of Eyam, a small village in Derbyshire in northern England. In 1665, plague arrived the village - this was the time of the Great Plague of London which Samuel Pepys documented in his diary. The villagers were faces with a choice, would they flee the plague and risk spreading it further or would they quarantine themselves to protect their neighbours? They chose the latter course and shut the village off, nobody was allowed to leave and nobody was allowed to enter. Over the next 14 months at least 270 people - men, women and children died - but the outbreak was contained and countless lives in the region were saved. The courage and selflessness of these simple folk has never been forgotten.

The Navigator - A Medieval Odyssey (1989). The subject matter you are talking about in a movie.

💯💯💯 *_Considering when a plague hits people buy toilet paper_* . *_I question the sanity and sanitary conditions of humanity_* .

1. I'm curious about what you personally love about rats and what initially motivated you to get them as pets. The fact that yours love Hotel California is hilarious (how did you first discover that?) and I would love to know who some of your favorite bands and artists are. 2. As a Sebastian I'm always tickled when hearing "Saint Sebastian". 3. "Passion Play" kind of sounds like a euphemism haha. 4. Thanks for the fascinating Shakespeare lesson, Jess! It's amazing just how illuminating context can be. You might be the only theater person I know who didn't refer to Macbeth exclusively as "the Scottish play". 5. If you don't feel that your novel is any good then think of it as a rough draft that can be revised down the line. I think I speak for all of us when I say that it would be amazing to see a book of yours get published! 6. What's strange is that as someone diagnosed with minor generalized anxiety I found that the pandemic made me a more relaxed person in the long run because a lot of the things that used to stress me out more seemed so insignificant in comparison to what was going on. I had a very unusual undergrad experience (I start grad school this fall) in that my first semester and a half at a community college were in person before the rest of my time was spent online primarily in the form of two accelerated classes being taken at a time instead of four classes over the course of sixteen weeks (only one instance of taking three accelerated classes at once brought on by wanting to get all my required credits before a certain point). A lot of people talk about their attention spans having gone down the toilet during the pandemic and how that made it difficult for them to read, but personally all the free time gave me ample opportunity to read more and that hugely built up my endurance as a reader and it typically doesn't take me too long to get through a book these days as along as I find it to be enjoyable.

@Jess_of_the_Shire

2 ай бұрын

I've always loved rodents, and when I was looking for a pet after college, they seemed the natural choice. I found out about Hotel California because I was listening to it while they were in the car. They lost their minds when they heard it, so I think they're just fans of the classics. I'm glad you enjoyed my Shakespeare section! He'll definitely get his own video someday because his plays are fascinating in a literary context. Luckily, I don't film in a theatre, so I'm safe to say Macbeth all I want! I may someday publish original writing! I plan to someday, but right now I'm happy to just hone my craft and study other people's work. And your observations about your attention span during the pandemic are fascinating! I think it's really interesting how differently people responded to it. Thanks for watching and sharing!

@sebastianevangelista4921

2 ай бұрын

@@Jess_of_the_Shire I look forward to the Shakespeare video and I'm glad that you are currently safe from theater superstitions. Are there any particular books or videos on the craft of writing that you have found to be especially helpful?

I want to mention two things that went through my mind while watching this video. When you mentioned the Decameron, the title sounded familiar, and I remembered that I happened to find a copy of that book on the outer windowsill of a basement window last year. In my country it is now common practice to put books that you no longer want to keep but don't want to throw away on public display so that anyone who is interested can take them with them. I was intrigued by the title and liked the illustrations, so I took it with me and put it on my bookshelf where it still sits unread. The other thing is, when you said that shooting arrows was seen as a symbol of contracting a disease, I was reminded that lumbago is colloquially referred to as “a witch's shot” (Hexenschuss) in German. Most people use this word without thinking about its literal meaning, but it may be a holdover from a time when people believed witches made people sick by shooting invisible cursed arrows at them.

This is such an interesting angle on the Black Plague! Stories really are essential for survival. I remember being taught multiple times in school about how rats’ fleas were the cause of the Black Death, so I’m glad to learn about it in a bit more depth.

Revisit your novel. You are too smart to have to decamp to isolation. "I'm not dead " (monty python). Maybe one day your book will be on the shelf behind you.

I wish this video had been out even a year or so ago. The pandemic and its lasting effects on the disabled community took me to a pretty dark headspace. And seeing the connection between plagues and Shakespeare’s work, as well as how disease affected Shakespeare’s views of humanity, made me feel less alone. And I definitely want to look into that more, if I ever get the chance. Thanks for making this video!

hiii found u cuz of the new shadow video anddd it was the best thing ever. Your content is so engaging and relaxing and interesting. Also you just as a person seem rly cool. Love everything u do❤❤

Great Video, altough i never would have expected you to make one about the Plague.

I was that nerd that took an online course on the Black Death during lockdown, and I learned a few really interesting things, including a few about rats and the spread of the plague. In addition to human to human spread being much more likely than rats spreading plague during the first 14th century plague pandemic that we now call the Black Death, studies conducted on bones from a London plague cemetery in the last decade have indicated that pneumonic plague, not bubonic, was the big killer in that pandemic. Pneumonic plague is bubonic plague that has spread to the respiratory system and can be spread through coughs and sneezes like any other respiratory illness, which means no rats, fleas, or other animals are involved in the spread. Pneumonic plague is also substantially deadlier than bubonic, and kills much faster, so this helps explain the estimated 60-70% death toll in large cities like London, Paris, and Florence. Furthermore, the idea that rats were the primary carriers of plague in the middle ages came about because of an 1890s plague pandemic in Asia. A British doctor observed that rats were carriers in that case, and connected the dots to the medieval pandemics. However, historians are skeptical of this claim because if rats had brought the disease to Europe, there would have been a major die off of rats around the time people started getting sick (which medieval people absolutely would have written about; after the pandemic started, they wrote about all kinds of signs beforehand, including the appearance of a comet), and there isn't. The only reports of animals dying at the same time come from England, where a cattle disease was killing off livestock and may also have spread to people. It's well known that sick Genoese merchants fleeing the Mongol siege of Kaffa in 1346/7 brought the disease into Sicily and then Genoa. This is another argument for pneumonic rather than bubonic plague. The Mongols had brought the plague west with them, ultimately from China, where the first reports of illness coincide with the seasonal breeding cycles of gerbils, which can also carry plague. So while high school text books will still be talking about black rats for decades to come, it's likely that gerbils are the ones that started the worst pandemic in history.

Loved this! And learned so much!

Very enjoyable as always.

WRT death I quote Koko "Comfortable hole,bye". We're not big or clever and we're living on borrowed time. Be nice to someone.

@grokeffer6226

2 ай бұрын

🦍❤✊👋👆

Thank you jess❤

The guy that got healed made me immediately think of a reverse gaspode the wonder dog. Gaspode would probably give the plague en pretty much half of all other diseases available.

yeah, 2020 was a walk in the park. Okay, we weren't allowed in the park, let's call it a walk around the apartment. But I didn't hear of anyone who used their last breath to sew themselves into their burial shroud. We had it good.

Hi Jess, thanks for this video, it takes an angle on the plagues I've never considered before! As a little token of appreciation I'd like to recommend a video you might like: *Clint's Reptiles - Rat, The Best Pet Mammal?* I've got some historical comments as well, following in a separate comment.

@Spielkalb-von-Sparta

2 ай бұрын

kzread.info/dash/bejne/nKCapLJmmridnrw.html

Thanks for the great content, keep up the good work❤

Very interesting. Thank you, Jess. ❤❤

Love your videos :) They're always really nice to listen to and so relaxing

Wonderful video, blah blah blah. The Ad Segment. I like it. The dumb elevator music, light demeanor and brevity. I usually hate ads anywhere, but I find your ad segments tolerable. Which is a high compliment coming from me. Well done.

Nice vid Jess. I have been watching lots of your videos recently and wanted to ask if you could do more "Dune" content at some point. I absolutley loved your other two videos on it. 😁

@Jess_of_the_Shire

2 ай бұрын

There's definitely more Dune videos coming! They'll be spaced out a bit, but I have a lot of Dune stuff to talk about.

@sebastianevangelista4921

2 ай бұрын

@@Jess_of_the_Shire Oh I am so looking forward to that!

@TheOnlyBanjo_Kablamjo

2 ай бұрын

​@@Jess_of_the_ShireCan't wait for it! Thanks Jess, you're one of new favorite youtubers. I am making my own Dune vid with a friend right now actually. 😊

Another great video. It's always interesting to see a video like this.

A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a very good book about it.

Godfrey is adorable! :) I was expecting the link from Black Death to the Black Breadth of Middle Earth, and the Spanish Flu Tolkien had to endure during World War I, but I anticipate that will all come in a follow-up video hopefully. **fingers-crossed** Have you seen Hank Green's recent KZread video on Tuberculosis this week? Turns out even today humanity still has a few things to learn, sigh... :(

@Jess_of_the_Shire

2 ай бұрын

That would be a really interesting topic! I'll have to add it to the list. And I have seen that! Something must be in the air (pardon the dark pun)

@willemvandebeek

2 ай бұрын

@@Jess_of_the_Shire it's okay, I don't mind a little black humour. Do you have Tolkien fatigue? It has been a while since you have revisited Middle Earth, which isn't a problem for me, I am just curious... :)

@willemvandebeek

2 ай бұрын

What's wrong with me...? Your previous video was about Samwise Gamgee! Sorry, please disregard my last comment. I think I got brain-fog from a Corona virus or something... o_O

This vid relates well to Crash Course's recent vid on tuberculosis.

@Jess_of_the_Shire

2 ай бұрын

It does! There must be something that's got us all thinking about epidemics right now

@curtiswfranks

2 ай бұрын

@@Jess_of_the_Shire: I cannot imagine any likely culprits.

The plague appears quite prominently in Romeo and Juliet. The priest carrying the message to Romeo stops to give the last rites to a dying man. The man turns out to have died of the plague and the priest is quarantined and not allowed to leave the house and cannot deliver the message. The result is the death of Romeo, Paris, and Juliet.

Yes! Another Jess upload!

I’m trying to write a story myself. I hope it works out but honestly I think finding a proper audience will be difficult for the story I want to tell. I just hope I can make something worth reading and I hope you can share your stories with the world as well. Have a great day

You have a gift for storytelling to make a video about the plague as interesting as what about my favorite book

Undeniably interesting and fun analysis from ya which intrigues w/ noteworthy history influencing narratives which I've always been drawn to so this is a joy!

Another really fantastic video video. Thank you.

As a Norwegian, I can tell you Rattus Norvegicus is the best rat.

just found your channel this week, you're great!

Love this, it's so facinating what people used stories for back then and how some still do now. (PS Love the series you are holding at 10:33)

Interesting and well researched as always.

Hi Jess, thanks again for your video, it takes an angle on the plagues I've never considered before! First off, I appreciate you dug into some source material like Boccaccio which is probably unknown to many of your followers. Secondly, I'm so glad to see a video about the black death which *doesn't* promote the idea of an alleged persecution of cats in medieval times, which is a myth, as far as we know from sources. Whilst watching your video I was all the time tensed if you'd repeat it but to my huge relief you didn't. Kudos to you for that! This leads me directly to my first remark. - *Witches* You've repeatedly mentioned them but contrary to some common misunderstanding they've not been a big thing during medieval times. Superstition was not so wide-spread as some popular media want us to believe. Actually, the church promoted the position only God can do miracles and everyone who thought otherwise would be regarded as a heretic. The persecution of witches began in the late 15th century and gained its peak in the early modern period, way after what we refer to as medieval times. Therefore I'd be very careful to use this term in the earlier periods. - *Masks* By the looks of the picture you've presented it stems from the 19th century, not at all a medieval source. That's another myth which is often presented in this context. Yes, they've probably uses sponges with herbs or lemon juice to protect them from bad odours, but such beak-masks are not supported by any contemporary sources, as far as I know. - *Poisoning the well* Yes, that was a dark spot in our history which I want to elaborate on. In Strasbourg they'd suspected Jews for being responsible for the plague by poisoning the wells with some exotic substance from the east nobody was able to identify. By means of torture they'd forced some confessions and distributed those fake-news all over the nowadays German region. This lead to some nasty pogroms of the Jews. That's all which comes to my mind out of the head without looking deeper into the topic. Please take these points as an addition to your well-done video, not as a negative critique of it. Thanks again so much for your effort! Edit: Happy Easter from an atheist! 🐰

Awwww! Hi Godfrey!

Glad to see Godfrey make an appearance. He's a star in the making.

@Jess_of_the_Shire

2 ай бұрын

I'll pass the message on to his agent

@fortyofforty5257

2 ай бұрын

@@Jess_of_the_Shire On a serious note, even though this video was a departure from your usual subjects, once again (as with all your videos) I found it both entertaining and informative. Do not shy away from covering any subjects of interest to you, because, chances are, they'll be of interest to your followers, too (or at least tolerable).

Exactly the video I needed, exactly when I needed it.

The bacteria were carried by flees, flees were carried by rats. Cats were a good rat control. Unfortunately, cats were associated with witches and witches were associated with plagues. To combat the plague, people had the bad idea to hunt cats. 15:54 since you hate rat misinformation, could you do a reaction to Your Friend the Rat, a short movie (less than 10 minutes) from Pixar? It is on one of their compilation DVDs and on the Ratatouille DVD.

@Spielkalb-von-Sparta

2 ай бұрын

_To combat the plague, people had the bad idea to hunt cats._ There's no evidence of this at all, as far as I know. It's just another myth about the medieval period which gets repeated in popular media over and over again without any foundation. Even in schools.

@Best_Stressed

2 ай бұрын

It's honestly kind of surprising to me that it took us so long to consider that a flea-borne disease in humans was probably just... borne by human fleas. :D

@ghyslainabel

2 ай бұрын

@@Best_Stressed the bacteria live in rat fleas. However, when a rat infested by fleas died, its fleas would search for the nearest rat but could live humans.

@Best_Stressed

2 ай бұрын

@@ghyslainabelThat's what we used to think (and it is where you would probably get the plague from in the unlikely event that you did get it nowadays), but as Jess points out in the video, recent research and modeling suggests that plague being carried by human parasites (fleas and ticks) better matches the patterns of spread that we saw during the great plague epidemics.

@ghyslainabel

2 ай бұрын

@@Best_Stressed years ago, I read something saying that Jewish people did not have the Christian obsession against witches and cats. The cats present in Jewish neighbourhood kept the rat population in check and limited the spread of the black death. I am not dismissing what Jess said, but I would not dismiss the rats either. It is probably a combination of both.

Medieval Jewish doctors developed public health practices that helped within the ghettos. Firstly, they promoted the clearing of garbage from the streets, since garbage facilitated the proliferation of rats, who provided a breeding ground for fleas. The Jewish doctors also encouraged the keeping of cats, who kept the rat population low, and slowed the spread of fleas.

It's unfortunate that more people did not avail themselves of the opportunity to indulge in recreational reading. A great many minds were permanently injured by this most recent plague.

Ratatouille, Remy, I will now bow down.

I've been binging your videos for a week or so now, absolutely loving your content. Have you ever considered doing videos on Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings series? I think you'd get a lot out of it.

I really think you could do a series on storytelling as a coping stratergy for inpactful events in history. Poetry through the world wars comes to mind for one but I feel you are well qualified to think of more examples. Its an interesting take and I feel you were insightful in this video in a way I wasn't necessarily expecting. And it drew me in. I just feel like its an interesting angle to take on historical events and maybe a topic to mine...

Very good! I didn't find it off putting or out of character for your channel. Though your focus is on Tolkien, You do a LOT around story telling and the stories themselves and his is a good dovetail to that. Thanks for taking the time to share your ruminations with the rest of us!

Eagles, my favorite band of all time!😉Really enjoy your channel and I love your delivery❤️

Show more of your rats, they're so cute

A version of " Hotel California" played with medieval musical instruments...

I found this channel through the great DUNE content, and I've enjoyed some of your Tolkien videos even though I am not a Lord of the Rings fan. This video was fantastic though: I enjoy your presentation style, but also found this topic to incredibly interesting. Blending storytelling and literature and history together, giving people the rat facts they didn't know they needed, it was all great. I hope you continue to exploring videos like this one, I really appreciated the insights here.

That is the way I pronounce "Decameron" too. Chaucer would be sued for plagiarism in today's world. Geoffrey, at least change the names of some of the characters. This video is a reminder that it is your views on things that make the channel so very interesting. A Happy Hobbity Easter to you.

I learned something new, thanks

I love the idea that you have a pet rat, and I also hate it.

The bubonic plague is still around, by the way. Thankfully it seems to have a hard time acquiring antibiotic resistance. But if it did... that would be bad.

I need to read your novel.

Everytime I see a new video from Jess I go make tea.

Fabulously interesting topic, Jess. 💗 And fabulously well-researched coverage of it. 👍 (Only one historical fact that I would take issue with, that being that Shakespeare was born in 1564. Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford, was actually born in 1550. 😉)

I'd love to hear a flute/pipe version of Hotel California....

your content is so fun if it was my history teacher i wouldn't listen... sorry if my english is bad and i cant express myself and if some words aren't spelled right im from North Macedonia europe🇲🇰✌️

@Spielkalb-von-Sparta

2 ай бұрын

Your English is just fine and understandable! Don't feel shy about it, I've seen lots of comments from English native speakers whose usage of their own language was _way_ worse than yours!

I seriously appreciate the Rat respect. They're cool critters and vastly underappreciated

This video is giving me anxiety... Well done!

Ooo Sweetie-pooper! More Godfrey content please! Seriously, you are the best Literature professor I've ever seen. And thanks for getting the Theology correct too!

Typically not much into Lord of the Rings just not my thing. However the times you have gone into other forms of literature I have thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks for the work you do.

@Jess_of_the_Shire

2 ай бұрын

I'm so glad you've enjoyed my videos, Lord of the Rings or otherwise!

Aww a cute little skaven pet, adorable 🥰

I saw the Oberammergau passion play in 2022. It was a beautiful play, and the singers are absolutely amazing!

Saint Roch is one of the most worshipped saints of the place I lived during my childhood and teenage years (I am from a country with a strong catholic heritage), so I know his history quite well... and it's quite made to be honest, he almost WANTED tò be infected by plague, it seemed to me he was seeking martyrdom when I discovered about him. But, and I tell It being an agnostic, even his history is of the kind you described in this video: it is needed to regain hope when nothing seems to work against an irrational force which threaten everything you know and love. (I'm using your videos to improve my English, thank you very much!)

Your portrait of the rat cracks me up😂 Very fitting.

Congratulations on breaking 100k! Happy belated Tolkien reading day. 🤘😎🖖🇨🇦

I'd love to know how Godfrey and friends react to "Hotel California".

Jess, I’d been planning a proposal of marriage and then I saw that rat. I’m sorry to say you’re now stuck in the friend zone 🤣. Thanks for the great vids, always excited to see a new one. And is it just me, or did you go from 100k subscribers to 126k (at the moment) in the snap of a finger? Your work is getting traction, and it’s fully deserved. Congratulations.

I can clearly see how the Bubonic Plague and any pandemic could create such mass catharsis. My account is anecdotal, but I can see how other people might relate. I was always filled with despair and hopelessness prior to COVID. I spent the duration of the lockdowns reading as much as I could, such as "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari, "Raise A Genius!" by Laszlo Polgar, Walter Isaacson's biography of Leonardo da Vinci, and "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." After having lived through COVID and catching the mild variant, I can say that it gave me a strange, cathartic sense of hope, optimism, and bursting creativity. Indeed, storytelling, whether in the form of literature or a passion play, can give meaning and agency to our lives despite the odds, despite the walls of the world closing in on us, despite the underlying feeling that everyone including ourselves might die any day now.

Just a quick add that Shakespeare used plague as a plot device in "Romeo and Juliet" Act 5, scene 2. Friar John reports that villagers on the outskirts of Verona, "Suspecting that we both were in a house / Where the infectious pestilence did reign, / Sealed up the doors and would not let us forth, / So that my speed to Mantua there was stayed." And thereby Romeo never got the Friar's letter about the plot to fake Juliet's death.

I adore hobbits and hobbitry. Your site a repose as you know. A friend goes in for her cancer op on Tuesday. A general anaesthetic and as military men go these are not generals you want to meet. Third in a month, one suspects one lives in strange terrain like Moria. I have found some comfort here amongst the works of Tolkien, It is not essentially my problem, I am required to be merely supportive. I am never this so ridiculous on the Internet but the shadow grows. I think we all appropriately need a Jess of the Shires in our life lest we submit to inconsequentially or shadows. My late mother, a great Tolkien fan, would have appreciated you, (That and Star Trek, she was a challenging lass) In her absence I trust her son's admiration will suffice. With best wishes. I have never trusted a man or loved a woman who has been averse to hobbits. Your mileage may vary.

One of my favourite fantasy settings, Dark Souls, revolts all around the coming of a plague and how it reshapes the land of Lordran and its inhabitants. In this case it's a very interesting take, since the plague itself is more of a curse, and those who are affected by it show the mark of a thin ash-like ring in their foreheads. The curse binds the infected ones into an endless cycle in which they reborn whenever they die... yet everytime they resurrect, a little part of themselves, of their very souls and minds, goes lost forever. The cursed ones lose themselves a little further with every death and rebirth, until eventually there's nothing left of them but an empty purposeless husk, whose sole driving force is to consume the souls of others, in a desperate yet vain attempt to restore themselves. These are known as Hollows, and their existence drove their society to their doom. The most interesting thing about this curse is that its origin remains uncertain (despite of some leads within the game's intrincate lore suggesting some clues in that regard). Not even the gods, who walked among mortals and were praised and reveered, would know where did it come from, much less how to stop it. Gwyn, god lord of Lordran, sees this as a signal of the end of the Age of Light, which gods themselves began, and the coming of the Age of Darkness... which, let me tell you, in this setting neither of them equals 'Good' or 'Evil'. Gwyn becomes desperate to find a way to stop the curse and prevent the inevitable, and in the end his efforts only make things far worse. When you arrive to Lordran, the world is in the same state as its inhabitants: there's nothing left but a hollow husk that has long forgotten who it was, and what its past even became of. I know Hidetaka Miyazaki has established several times before he never seeked to create a clear visible allegory (like a certain writer we admire :P), the nature and the effects of this 'undead curse' in Dark Souls are heavily reminiscent to me of alzheimer. In many ways, it's a fate far worse than death: a 'death' in life, if you will; to breathe and exist, but without anything that makes you unique as an individual or makes life worth living through. Great video and essay as usual, Jess! Have a Hobbit-y day yourself!

Aww, Godfrey! 😍

This was fascinating, and I was waiting for Jess to get to the unjust treatment of rats... She did not disappoint. 😂

If any of you like story-driven video games, I recommend playing the Plague Tale series😌🐀

Great topic and very well presented. For anyone interested in delving more I suggest Byung-Chul Han's "The Crisis of Narration" and Girard's "Violence and the Sacred"

Hi!

You look more Irish than Irish. Without red hair and green eyes. That does not make sense. But 1985 a girl that looked just like you did walk in the parks of Dublin. And I have never forgotten her.

New Orleanians all cringed at once when you said "St. Roach." It's pronounced 'rock,' generally, in English. We have a whole neighborhood named after him.

@FrJohnCorrigan

2 ай бұрын

It’s unfortunate that English has adopted the French spelling of St Roch’s name (although it is sometimes anglicised St Rock). The spelling in the other Latinate languages is a better rendering of English pronunciation: Roque in Spanish and Portuguese; Rocco in Italian. But Jess should get extra points awarded for correctly pronouncing the beautifully named Oberammergau.