A Tale of Two Competing Pandemic Experiences

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UC San Diego
New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession
Title
A Tale of Two Competing Pandemic Experiences
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1c27c351
Journal
New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession, 2(2)
Author
Fruoco, Jonathan
Publication Date
2021
DOI
10.5070/NC32251125
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Fruoco. 2021. A Tale of Two Competing Pandemic Experiences. New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession 2.2:
65-67. https://escholarship.org/uc/ncs_pedagogyandprofession/| ISSN: 2766-1768.
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Volume 02 |Issue 02 Autumn 2021
A Tale of Two Competing Pandemic Experiences
Jonathan Fruoco
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1642-9357
Independent Scholar, Chambéry, France

Fruoco: Two Competing Pandemic Experiences
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https://escholarship.org/uc/ncs_pedagogyandprofession/| ISSN: 2766-1768.
A Tale of Two Competing Pandemic Experiences
Jonathan Fruoco
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1642-9357
Independent Scholar, Chambéry, France
Abstract
How does a teacher and scholar react to a pandemic? One might ask fifteen people that question and
get fifteen different answers. In this paper, I outline my own experience with COVID-19 and how I
managed to use the situation to focus on my research, despite tremendous institutional and
professional difficulties.

Fruoco: Two Competing Pandemic Experiences
New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession 2.2: 65-67. 66
https://escholarship.org/uc/ncs_pedagogyandprofession/| ISSN: 2766-1768.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Being an academic is not easy, even when a
pandemic is not around to ravage an already difficult job market; being specialized in medieval English
literature within French academia only tends to make things worse. When this particular crisis hit us,
we found ourselves locked down and thus deprived of the ability to physically escape the daily
consequences of this crisis. Whereas Boccaccio’s characters found a way to flee the plague in the
Tuscan countryside, we ended up locked in our homes in fear of another sort of scourge.
So how does a teacher and scholar deal with this situation? I am convinced you might ask fifteen
people that question and get fifteen different answers. In France, the confinement started in March of
2020 and I found myself in a surprisingly awkward situation. Most of my colleagues throughout the
world had the pleasure of having teaching responsibilities and of being able to share the fruit of their
labour with students—I was not. I had been working for a few years in a private school (in Grenoble,
France), teaching business English to future bankers and sales representatives, but the situation had
gradually become unbearable. Teaching had become impossible for me mainly because of an
unsupportive management and seemingly endless harassment. By December 2019, I was teaching two
different groups in two different rooms (fortunately in the same building) in the same time slot, thus
basically doing the task of two teachers. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. Some
friends and colleagues have praised my productivity in the past, but I am yet to master the art of
ubiquity. By January 2020, I was on sick leave as my health had deteriorated because of my work
conditions; between February and May, I was forced to legally fight my employers to be freed from
my contract as the mere thought of going back to that school gave me nightmares. In other words,
when COVID-19 truly hit France and forced us to work from home, I was technically no longer
‘working’. If you set aside the hours spent fighting my employer, I had all the time in the world to
focus on my research, namely editing a new bilingual edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s work. It was the
spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
In effect, time seemed to have stopped, leaving me with literally nothing to do but translate the
words written centuries ago by a poet I have long admired and who helped me get through the COVID
crisis, just as poetry helped Boccaccio’s brigata. During the three months of this first French lockdown
(I write these words in the midst of the second), I managed to finish the first of five volumes of my
new bilingual Chaucer, with nine months to spare. My publisher was, as you can imagine, ecstatic.
During the following months (May to December) I finished correcting the proofs of a book published
by De Gruyter and MIP in October and edited a collection of essays for Routledge.
Yet, this apparently positive outcome was balanced by isolation, the sustained harassment from
my employer and the necessity to find a new university—various hard blows. I had been a research
fellow at the Université Grenoble Alpes for six years when the head of my research unit told me to be
gone by September 2020. I had never been paid a cent for my research—which had nonetheless
boosted the statistics of my team and accordingly increased their government funding—and despite
my numerous job applications I was systematically refused teaching jobs. In the end, colleagues told
me I had effectively been sacked for being too productive as a scholar while the rest of them were
overwhelmed by a staggering amount of administrative work—quite ironic when you think about it.
We had everything before us, we had nothing before us. The lockdown was made even more

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harrowing by my need to find a new academic affiliation to welcome my modest contribution to the
field of medieval studies.
In addition to my ongoing quest to find a new university, access to my local university library—
still the one in Grenoble—remained impossible during the year’s crisis (I blame university policies). I
have been systematically refused access to documents, even though I am still duly registered at the
library because I am considered an ‘outsider’. I was feeling increasingly isolated, not so much as a
human being—I was fortunately locked in with my girlfriend and two cats—but as a scholar. 2020
was meant to be my ‘jubilee’, celebrating ten years as an academic with three international conferences
in Durham (UK), Oxford, and Moscow, plus a few others in France. But as spring turned into summer,
all these conferences were postponed one by one and it soon became clear that the year I had been
expecting and planning for would turn out to be quite different. We were all going direct to Heaven,
we were all going direct the other way. Missing conferences and the thrills of intellectual arguments
was one thing, but the most powerful absence for me was missing the friends that I only get to see at
those events.
So how does a scholar deal with a pandemic like COVID-19? In my case, by working, writing as
if my life depended on it. Many days, I felt it did. As Charles Dickens would put it, some of the noisiest
authorities of the time insist on our period being received for good or for evil, in the superlative degree
of comparison only. It turns out that the only way I can make sense of this period is by comparing the
positives and the negatives and acknowledging the period’s paradoxical nature. I was thrilled to be
able to spend so many hours a day writing, it was indeed the best of times. Yet it was also the worst
of times. I became increasingly productive while being struck by a professional anxiety I had never
experienced before and the obvious financial difficulties that usually come with it. I ended up broke,
incapable of borrowing books (not to mention buying any!), harassed by my employer, sacked by my
university and cut off from my friends and colleagues. But I had the one thing that has always sustained
me: academia.