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.