The series of yellow fever epidemics that devastated New Orleans through the nineteenth century were also the result, in part, of the city’s geographical position, its unforgiving climate, and the policies of interested parties the fever’s awful death toll was likewise accompanied by a grotesque array of sights, sounds and smells. But this is far from the first New Orleanian disaster to manifest itself through the senses in this way. Accompanying the terrible images of bloated corpses and thousands trapped in an apparently abandoned city were numerous descriptions of the awful sounds and smells of the disaster, the stench of death and neglect exacerbated by the intense heat and stagnating, polluted floodwaters. The horrors unleashed by Hurricane Katrina and her political partners-in-crime in 2005 and since have reminded the world of the city’s fragility, as well as the particular circumstances of its geography and climate. Its cuisine is as renowned as its music, its architectural beauty as intense as the heat and rain that beat down upon it. Haut de pageġThrough the best and worst of times, New Orleans is a particularly sensory city. Cet article traitera donc du profond engagement du roman avec les différentes “modalités sensuelles” d’un lieu particulier des États du Sud. Yellow Jack ne procure pas seulement une rencontre intense de fiction avec une importante phase historique de la ville mais aussi une étude sophistiquée sur le rôle de la représentation visuelle pour la documentation de telles horreurs, dont la prose est profondément enracinée dans les odeurs et les bruits du temps et du lieu. Dans cet essai, je me limite au roman Yellow Jack de Josh Russell, qui, publié en 1999, trace le portrait complexe de cette ville du milieu du xixe siècle, de ses épidémies de fièvre et de ses récits contradictoires. This article, then, will discuss this novel’s intense engagement with the various “senses” of a very particular Southern place.ĭans un certain sens comparables à la tragédie et aux conséquences de l'ouragan Katrina en 2005, les séries d’épidémies de fièvre jaune qui dévastèrent La Nouvelle-Orléans au cours du XIXe siècle furent aussi - du moins partiellement - le résultat de la situation géographique de la ville, de son climat insupportable et de la politique des milieux intéressés de manière semblable, la rage de cette fièvre ravageuse était accompagnée d’un ensemble grotesque d’images, de bruits et d’odeurs. As well as providing an intense fictional encounter with a formative period in New Orleans’s history, Yellow Jack is a sophisticated study of the role of visual imagery in documenting such horrors, whose prose is steeped in the smells and sounds of the time and place. This article will focus upon Josh Russell’s 1999 novel Yellow Jack, which provides a complex portrait of the mid-nineteenth-century city, its fever epidemics, and its conflicting narratives. In ways comparable to the horrors of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in 2005, the series of yellow fever epidemics that devastated New Orleans through the nineteenth century were also the result, in part, of the city’s geographical position, its unforgiving climate, and the policies of interested parties the fever’s awful death toll was likewise accompanied by a grotesque array of sights, sounds and smells.
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