FratFiles

• Save Paper

Norman F. Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague (New York: Harper Collins First Perennial edition, 2001) examines how the bubonic plague, or Black Death, affected Europe in the fourteenth century. Cantor recounts specific events in the time leading up to the plague, during the plague, and in the aftermath of the plague. He wrote the book to relate the experiences of victims and survivors and to illustrate the impact that the plague had on the government, families, religion, the social structure, and art.
To illustrate some of the political upheaval due to the Black Death, a good example Cantor uses is the story of the Plantagenets. If the Black Death had not killed so many peasants who made up the army, the Plantagenets may have become kings of France (p. 214). Ten years before the plague, about sixty percent of wealth and almost all political power in Western Europe lie in the hands of about three hundred noble families (p. 59). The nobles employed thousands of workers, and the......

View the rest of this paper...

Approximate Word Count: 994
Approximate Pages: 4 (250 words per double-spaced page)

Similar Essays