Society & Culture
Today's Coronavirus Pandemic is a stark reminder of how disease resonates in psyches of a population. In 1842, Edgar Allan Poe published a short story meditating on the reality of petulance, the paranoia of contagion, and mankind's often fruitless attempts to keep illnesses out. The Masque of The Red Death, while (hopefully) not prophetic, is undoubtedly a portrait of the spectral role that disease plays in the life and unconscious of every human.