I Promessi Sposi” or The Betrothed: How plague rampaged Milan and its duchy around 1630
"I Promessi Sposi" or The Betrothed: How plague rampaged Milan and its duchy around 1630
Play Video
Alessandro Manzoni is one of the great authors who famously wrote about plagues of the past. In his novel “I Promessi Sposi” or The Betrothed, he talks several times about the plague that rampaged Milan and its duchy around 1630. The interesting thing is that Manzoni, drawing on historical sources, shows us how the reality was denied even back then and how this contributed greatly to the spread of the scourge. Manzoni tells us how, just like today with the Covid-19 pandemic, some people, politicians and magistrates openly and irrationally denied the reality of the plague which had been recognized by experts.
Reading the two central chapters that deal with the topic, XXXI and XXXII, we see that even then, as now, underestimating the danger, inappropriate behavior and lack of attention to the warnings by experts led to uncontrolled spread of the contagion.
Given the surprising nature of the coincidences, we decided to present this classic of Italian literature to the Indian public, and asked Prof. Enzo Bragantini, professor of Italian literature of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” to give an introduction to the book focusing on the above-mentioned two chapters.
This is followed by a reading of selected passages from the two chapters in Italian and English respectively by writer Matteo Trevisani and Enrico Arman, Italian reader at DU and JMI University.