Boccaccio’s Two Little Pigs: Animal Deaths during the Black Death

In his account of the 1348 plague outbreak in Florence, Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio described the deaths of two pigs who had been exposed to the clothes of a plague victim. He explained:    One day […] the rags of a pauper who had died from the disease were thrown into the street, where they…

Notes on Grim

Emily Waples// Last week, we reached a point in this pandemic that has been some eighteen months in the making: more Americans have now died of COVID-19 than of the 1918-1919 flu. I’ve been dreading the moment less for the fact of it than for the fanfare, anticipating the precise terms in which I knew…