Divergent stories? Narrating ancient and current reactions to pandemics (original) (raw)

2024, Horitzó. Revista de ciències de la religió 5, 2024, pp. 67-79

Although this recent COVID virus is new, it is well known that this pandemic, in its medical characteristics, in its impact on the population and even in its social and economic repercussions, is nothing new. There is a long tradition of previous pandemics that have affected Western culture and have left literary footprints over the centuries. Pandemics generally share common features: the description of the symptoms, the response of the authorities, even the lockdown of the population, are recurring, and help us to see the current situation with some perspective. However, despite the similarities in the way illness has been metaphorized over the centuries, the divergences are particularly striking: while in ancient and medieval literary accounts illness is seen, in a metaphorical reading, as a moral, social and natural disorder as a whole, and the reaction of the majority of society is always a moral upheaval that leads to the loss of religious and ethical values, in current accounts, the media narrative emphasises shared feelings, popular gestures, and hopeful mimetism that have occurred all over the world. As a result, our civic values and religious belief systems, far from weakening, have been even strengthened. In order to clearly delineate an area for analysis, I will mainly focus on the social reactions to the pandemics described by Thucydides (5th century BC) and by Procopius of Caesarea (6th century AD) and contrast them with social reactions during the current pandemic, especially through media narratives such as news reports and political slogans. I will try to establish the devices in constructing of a story about the pandemic in each cultural context, and to illustrate how the ancient metaphors can be used to better understand the collective story of the current pandemic.