Europe : Oxford University Press : 9780198870647 : 0198870647 : 21 Jan 2021 : This collaborative two-volume literary history of Europe, the first yet attempted, unfolds through ten sequences of places linked by trade, travel, topography, language, pilgrimage, alliance, disease, and artistic exchange. The period covered, 1348-1418, provides deep context for understanding current developments in Europe, particularly as initiated by the destruction and disasters of World War II. We begin with the greatest of all European catastrophes: the 1348 bubonic plague, which killed one person in three. Literary cultures helped speed recovery from this unprecedented 'ground zero' experience, providing solace, distraction, and new ideals to live by. Questions of where Europe begins and ends, then as now, and disputes over whom truly 'belongs' on European soil are explored, if not solved, through writing. A war that would last for a century convulsed much of western Europe. Divisions between Orthodox