Viral Modernism - (Modernist Latitudes) by Elizabeth Outka

The Viral Modernism book reveals the literary and cultural impact of one of the deadliest plagues in history, the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, on modernist literature and society.

Elizabeth Outka shows how and why the contours of modernism shift when we account for the pandemic's hidden but widespread presence.

The book examines how literature and culture represented the virus's deathly fecundity, as writers wrestled with the scope of mass death in the domestic sphere amid fears of wider social collapse.

Viral Modernism brings to light overt treatments of the pandemic by authors like Katherine Anne Porter and Thomas Wolfe, as well as its subtle presence in works by Virginia Woolf, T.

S.

Eliot, and W.

B.

Yeats.

The book uncovers links to the disease in popular culture, from early zombie resurrection to the resurgence of spiritualism.

By bringing the pandemic to the center of the era, Viral Modernism reveals a vast tragedy that has hidden in plain sight.

This book is an extraordinary achievement and will be talked about for years to come.