The bubonic plague pandemic known as the Black Death swept through Eurasia and North Africa between 1347-1351, killing an estimated 30-60% of Europe's population and millions more across Asia and the Middle East. The catastrophe resulted from Yersinia pestis bacteria spread by fleas on rats traveling along trade routes. The massive mortality disrupted economies, social structures, and religious beliefs across multiple continents.

The Black Death profoundly influenced European literature, inspiring works like Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which framed stories within plague contexts. Poetry reflected pervasive memento mori themes, danse macabre imagery, and questioning of divine justice. The trauma accelerated vernacular literature's growth as Latin-speaking clergy died disproportionately, while existential anxiety and social upheaval created conditions for more skeptical, human-centered literary perspectives that prefigured Renaissance thought.