During the first mandatory lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic, citizens worldwide turned to 'pandemic fictions' or started to produce their own 'Corona Fictions' across different media. These accounts of (previously) experienced or imagined health crises feature a great variety of protagonists and their (re)actions in response to the exceptional circumstances. The contributors to this volume take a closer look at different pandemic protagonists in fictional narratives relating to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as in existing pandemic fictions. Thereby they provide new insights into pandemic narratives from a cultural, literary, and media studies perspective from antiquity to today.

Yvonne Völkl is a literary and cultural studies scholar in the field of Romance studies. Her research focuses on 18th-century literature and press, French-Canadian migrant literature and contemporary Corona Fictions.