Back cover
This volume deals with natural disasters in late medieval and early modern central and southern Italy. Contributions look at a range of catastrophic events such as eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, floods, earthquakes, and outbreaks of plague and epidemics. A major aim of this volume is to investigate the relationship between catastrophic events and different communication strategies that embraced politics, religion, propaganda, dissent, scholarship as well as collective responses from the lower segments of society.
The contributors to this volume share a multidisciplinary approach to the study of natural disasters which draws on disciplines such as cultural and social history, anthropology, literary theory, and linguistics. Together with analyzing the prolific production of propagandistic material and literary sources issued in periods of acute crisis, the documentation on disasters studied in this volume also includes laws and emergency regulations, petitions and pleas to the authorities, scientific and medical treatises, manuscript and printed newsletters as well as diplomatic dispatches and correspondence.
Contributors of Giancarlo Alfano, Domenico Cecere, Silvana DAlessio, Chiara De Caprio, Rita Fresu, Lorenza Gianfrancesco, Giovanni Gugg, Francesco Montuori, Pasquale Palmieri, Francesco Senatore, Pierluigi Terenzi.
Domenico Cecere is Assistant Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Naples Federico II.
Chiara De Caprio is Associate Professor of Italian Linguistics and History of Italian Language at the University of Naples Federico II.
Lorenza Gianfrancesco is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Chichester.
Pasquale Palmieri is Assistant Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Naples Federico II.
Cover ill ustration: Nicolas P errey, Stato del Mon te Vesuvio doppo lu ltimo incendio de 1 6 di decembre 1631 , from Gianbernardino Giuliani, Trattato d el Monte Vesuvio e d e suoi incendi, in Napoli , appresso Egi dio Longo, MDCXXXII.
Viella Historical Research
Disaster Narratives
in Early Modern Naples
Politics, Communication and Culture
edited by
Domenico Ce cere, Chiara De Capr io, Lorenza Gianfran cesco, Pasquale Palm ieri
Translated by Enrica Maria Ferrara
viella
Copyright 2018 - Viella s.r.l.
All rights reserved
First Edition: November 2018
ISBN 978-88-6728-645-4 Hardback
ISBN 978-88-3313-430-7 PDF
ISBN 978-88-3313-908-1 ePub
This research was carried out thanks to the Programme STAR 2013 Linea 1, financially supported by Universit degli Studi di Napoli Federico II and Compagnia di San Paolo.
The essays in this volume have been translated from Italian into English by Enrica Maria Ferrara, except for Lorenza Gianfrancescos.
The index of names and the bibliographic revision are by Carmen Gallo, Annachiara Monaco, Gennaro Schiano and Valentina Sferragatta.
Contents
Disaster narratives and texts. A meeting ground for different cultural domains
I. Textual Configurations, Narrative St ructures and Lexicon
Chiara De Caprio
Narrating Disasters: Writers and Texts Between Historical Experience and Narrative Discourse
Francesco Montuori
Voices of the totale eccidio: On the Lexicon of Earthquakes in the Kingdom (1456-1784)
Rita Fresu
The Water Ran with Such Force. The Representation of Floods in the Early Modern Era: Textual Configurations, Conceptual Models, Linguistic Aspects
II. Communities in Fear: Reporti ng Disasters in Chro nicles and Petitions
Pierluigi Terenzi
Earthquakes, Society and Politics in LAquila in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Francesco Senatore
Survivors Voices: Coping with the Plague of 1478-1480 in Southern Italian Rural Communities
III. Communication, Di ssent and Propaganda
Domenico Cecere
Moralising Pamphlets: Calamities, Information and Propaganda in Seventeenth-Century Naples
Giancarlo Alfano
The Portrait of Catastrophe: The Image of the City in Seventeenth-century Neapolitan Culture
Lorenza Gianfrancesco
Narratives and Representations of a Disaster in Early Seventeenth-century Naples
Silvana DAlessio
On the Neapolitan Plague of 1656: Expedients and Remedies
IV. A City Under Siege: Ritua ls and Saints Prote ction in Early Moder n Neapolitan Culture
Pasquale Palmieri
Protecting the Faithful City: Disasters and the Cult of the Saints (Naples, 1573-1587)
Giovanni Gugg
The Missing Ex-Voto : Anthropology and Approach to Devotional Practices during the 1631 Eruption of Vesuvius
Contributors
Domenico Cecere, Chiara De Caprio, Lorenza Gianfrancesc o, Pasquale Palmieri
Disaster narratives and texts. A meeting ground for different cultural domains
This volume is the result of a two-year research project on Disaster Texts. Literacy, Cultural Identity, Coping Str ategies in Southern Italy between the La te Medieval and Earl y Modern Period , directed between 2014 and 2016 by Chiara De Caprio (Department of Humanities, University of Naples Federico II).
By undertaking research with a wide chronological and geographical scope which spans from the late medieval to the early modern period, and from central to southern Italy, this volume contributes to a long-standing multidisciplinary scholarly tradition that has approached the study of natural disasters through the disciplines of intellectual and social history, anthropology, literary theory and linguistics.
With specific reference to Vesuvius, recent studies by Casapullo, Cocco, Gianfrancesco, Luongo and Tortora, to name but a few, have focussed on a large corpus of material (both printed and in manuscript form) in assessing the extent to which collective interpretations of and responses to volcanic eruptions have been shaped by religious, cultural and political beliefs. In the main, at least during the early modern period, eruptions of Vesuvius tended to be interpreted as the consequences of sin. Accordingly, the relationship between humans and the environment was viewed as affecting the cultural sphere of communities: from large urban settings to rural villages. The essays in this volume aim to address these gaps by bringing to light hitherto overlooked printed and manuscript material on disasters that occurred in late medieval and early modern central and southern Italy. Accordingly, together with research focussed on eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, contributions include studies of the flooding of the river Tiber; and various earthquakes notably those that hit Abruzzo in fourteenth and fifteenth century; southern Italy in 1456; the province of Capitanata in 1627; and Calabria in 1638. In addition, some essays deal with outbreaks of plague and epidemics that occurred in the fifteenth century and in 1656.
Moreover, contributions to this volume investigate the relationship between natural disasters and different communication strategies that embraced politics, religion, propaganda, dissent, scholarship and collective responses from the lower segments of society. Indeed, following some stimulating studies by Bevilacqua, Dickie, Foot, Guidoboni, Snowden, and Valensise, which have highlighted the relationship between environmental calamities and society, the essays in this volume variously address societal responses to disasters in the geographical areas under scrutiny.
