Original scientific paper
Man in Times of Plague: on Repeatability of Phenomena and Invariability of Perception of the World (Relations Contained in Medieval South Slavic Micro-Texts)
Izabela Lis-Wielgosz
; The Institute of Slavic Philology
Abstract
The article considers the issues of repeatability/periodicity of natural phenomena (including epidemic of various illnesses, plague, murrain) along with durability of their socio-cultural/community perceptions, given meanings, actual and imagined formulations. The overriding goal of this paper is thus to show patterns of literary verbalization of events perceived as real and supernatural in order to consider a problem of plague/epidemic in a thicket of expressive, semantic and imaginative structures. Presented considerations are based on the ancient South Slavic micro-texts known more widely as records or marginalia (side notes) placed on the borders of old manuscripts’ pages. Due to their position, they are regarded not only as supplements but also as autonomous and internally consistent texts, that is, the so-called small literary forms. Excerpted from these forms, epidemic narratives and relations refer to many cultural ideas, images and motifs, the analysis of which can be used to characterize and understand the attitudes, emotions and predilections of the man in distant past. He is usually perceived from the view-point of the medieval concept of homo religiosus. Some psycho-cultural and psychosocial parallels in the human attitudes in the past and present are also indicated in the article.
Keywords
man; plague; perception; epidemic narratives; medieval South Slavic micro-texts; marginalia
Hrčak ID:
267358
URI
Publication date:
16.12.2021.
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