Date of Award
12-17-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
History
First Advisor
Charles Romney
Abstract
During the Influenza Pandemic of 1918, commonly referred to as The Spanish Flu, somewhere between 20 and 100 million lives were lost globally, but this tragedy has faded from history in many Western cultures. World War I, while far less deadly, has been memorialized far more frequently and has been overshadowing the devastation of the pandemic since its inception. The grief that survivors experienced–for loved ones and for themselves–was not given an external outlet and as a result there are few contemporary historical sources to turn to when looking for evidence of that grief. In the absence of more traditional historical texts, literary sources authored by survivors offer historically relevant evidence of that grief being processed publicly in a way that was more acceptable in societies that had chosen to move on and try to forget. This paper specifically analyzes the novella “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” by Katherine Anne Porter, and the novel The Land of Mist by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Both texts offer insight into a grief that was not forgotten as it may seem when looking at the historical record alone, but was instead suppressed in public narratives while still lingering in private lives.
Recommended Citation
Robertson, Caitlin Liana, "“The Dead Cold Light of Tomorrow”: Historical Grief in Literature in the Aftermath of Influenza" (2024). Theses and Dissertations. 1254.
https://research.ualr.edu/etd/1254
