Narratives of Catastrophe in the Early Modern Period: Awareness of Historicity and Emergence of Interpretative Viewpoints
Résumé
When, why, and how do people write about a natural disaster? The article
characterizes three ways of narrating catastrophe — allegorical, anecdotal, and historical—
and shows that a shift toward the historical narrative takes place at the beginning
of the seventeenth century, more precisely around 1630, and mainly in Italy. The most
likely explanation is twofold. First, the interpretation of catastrophes no longer relies
solely on rehgious explanations, but political and polemical ones are also starting to be
considered. Second, the expression of a point of view contributes to this increased
recourse to the narrative. This article argues that the flourishing of catastrophe narratives
is related to interpretative conflicts. The second issue raised by this article is the
difference between factual and flctional narratives. This question is examined in the
context of the historical experience constructed by the narrative. The fictional accounts
of catastrophe will be characterized as such: fiction allows the disaster to be experienced
in a paradoxical relation to time, through the point of view of an "impossible witness."