We’re supposed to suppress feelings of envy. But what if the kind spurred by school shutdowns, frontline work and cramped apartments are worth exploring – and acting upon?
The Women’s Prize for Fiction has just published 25 literary works by female authors with their real names for the first time. Could we do the same for Miles Franklin and Henry Handel Richardson here?
A scene from the Decameron painted by Carlo Coppede in 1916.
Sailko/Wikimedia Commons
Written between 1348 and 1353, the Decameron is a prescription for psychological survival, a way of mentally distancing from today’s death counts and grim economic forecasts.
The arts, literature and culture provide models for hope and resilience in times of crisis.
(Marc-Olivier Jodoin/Unsplash)
The radical hope we find in the arts, culture and literature is often a reflection of the times. Drawing from the past there are many examples of how dreams can become a form of resilience.
Stephen King famously called Jim Thompson’s Sheriff Lou Ford ‘the Great American Sociopath.’
derrickthebarbaric/DeviantArt
Contrived plots, two-dimensional characters, ridiculous resolutions: the master of comic novels takes these elements and spins them into gold, bringing consolation during these grim times.
Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, and Emilie François in Ang Lee’s film of Sense and Sensibility (1995).
Columbia Pictures
Books are both solace and provocation during a pandemic. This novel set during Hurricane Sandy is a poignant, often hilarious, reckoning with catastrophe and mortality.
Great stories move and they challenge. They draw attention to diverse social and cultural issues and to the transformative potential of empathy. But they can be difficult too.