The Plague and the Wolf as Places of Memory
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/APH.2019.119.02Keywords
Plague, Wolf, Boccaccio, Matteo VillaniAbstract
The essay compares two cases of very intense panic caused by the destructive forces of nature. The panic caused by the Black Death – a topic Halina Manikowska also dealt with – is presented from the point of view of its frightening memory. The long-term evolution and changes in the then-prevailing attitudes is compared to the lasting fear and panic from the menace of wolves, which also represented a mortal danger in medieval and early modern Europe; they were also feared and had to be fought against for centuries. The nature of the danger from the presence of wolves, and the ways to defend oneself against it, was however very different from the danger related to the plague.References
Bernardo Aldo S., ‘The Plague as a Key to Meaning in Boccaccio’s Decameron’ in Daniel Willman (ed.), The Black Death: The Impact of the Fourteenth-Century Plague (Binghampton and New York, 1982), 39–64.
Biraben Jean-Noël, Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays européens et méditerranéens (Paris and La Haye, 1975), vols. 1–2.
Cohn Samuel K. Jr., The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death. Six Renaissance Cities in Central Italy (Baltimore and London, 1992).
De Blécourt Willem (ed.), Werewolf Histories (New York, 2015).
Delumeau Jean, La Peur en Occident (XIVe–XVIIIe siècles) (Paris, 1978).
Gecser Ottó, ‘Sermons on St Sebastian after the Black Death (1348–ca. 1500)’, in id. et al. (eds.), Promoting the Saints: Cults and Their Contexts from Late Antiquity until the Early Modern Period. Essays in Honor of Gábor Klaniczay for his 60th Birthday (Budapest, 2011), 261–72.
Graus František, Pest, Geißler, Judenmorde. Das 14. Jahrhundert als Krisenzeit (Göttingen, 1987).
Hecker Justin, Der schwarze Tod im vierzehnten Jahrhundert. Nach den Quellen für Aerzte und Nichtärzte bearbeitet (Berlin, 1832).
Pluskowski Aleksander, Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006).
Rheinheimer Martin, ‘Die Angst vor dem Wolf. Werwolfglaube, Wolfsagen und Ausrottung der Wölfe in Schleswig-Holstein’, Fabula 36 (1995), 25–78;
Toubert Pierre, ‘La Peste Noire (1348), entre Histoire et biologie moléculaire’, Journal des Savants (Janvier-Juin 2016), 17–32.
Ziegler Philip, The Black Death (London, 1969).
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Title, logo and layout of journal are reserved trademarks of APH.Stats
Number of views and downloads: 375
Number of citations: 1
