In his 2021 opinion article in The New York Times, Adam Grant called the COVID-19 pandemic the ‘boring apocalypse’. Indeed, while pre-pandemic imaginaries of global pandemics tended to focus on spectacular killer viruses, for many people in the Global North, the challenge of the pandemic was, if not boredom, then a sense of recurring routine. Although the pandemic also created strong affects like fear and anger, this article will look at the ‘flat affects’ that grew out of the sense of stasis. The theoretical framework of the article is based on the thinking of Lauren Berlant. My theoretical reflection is followed by an analysis of three British novels written during the pandemic: Sarah Moss’ The Fell, Sarah Hall’s Burntcoat and Clare Pollard’s Delphi. I will, above all, focus on the representations of affective responses to the routines of the pandemic in the often overlooked private sphere.

中文翻译：

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无聊的启示录：当代英国流行病小说中平淡情感的表现

亚当·格兰特 (Adam Grant) 在《纽约时报》2021 年发表的评论文章中将 COVID-19 大流行称为“无聊的末日”。事实上，虽然全球流行病流行前的想象往往集中在壮观的杀手病毒上，但对于北半球许多人来说，流行病的挑战即使不是无聊，也是一种反复出现的例行公事的感觉。尽管疫情也造成了恐惧和愤怒等强烈影响，但本文将探讨因停滞感而产生的“扁平影响”。本文的理论框架基于Lauren Berlant的思想。我的理论反思之后是对大流行期间写的三本英国小说的分析：莎拉·莫斯的《堕落》、莎拉·霍尔的《烧衣》和克莱尔·波拉德的《德尔菲》。首先，我将重点关注在经常被忽视的私人领域中对流行病惯例的情感反应的表现。