Metaphors of Infectious Disease in Eighteenth-Century Literature: Complex Comparatives in Daniel Defoe’s _A Journal of the Plague Year_ (1722)

This essay argues that eighteenth-century literary depictions of infectious disease were never uniformly negative-- even when the disease was something as terrifying and dangerous as the Bubonic plague. Surveying the period's most commonplace disease metaphors-- disease as 'the enemy'; disease as foreign invader, immigrant, or import; disease as commodity, currency, or capital; and disease as visitor or tourist-- this essay demonstrates that eighteenth-century writers were alert to the connections between infection and charity or benevolence, as well as between infection and danger, corruption, and hostility.