La peste, il Covid e l’Umanità di fronte alla Natura. Rilettura semiotica dei capitoli XXXI e XXXII dei Promessi sposi

The article is a semiotic re-reading of chapters XXXI and XXXII of the Betrothed on the plague in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the first part I focus on the lexical and semantic aspects of the plague’s description, with comparative references to the Covid, in order to evaluate the way in which the virus was thought, conceived, conceptualized. In the second part I focus – in a perspective of textual semiotics – on the plague’s narrative role, which gives – as a natural force – a decisive turn to the events and places man in a state of subordination in front of the nature and its manifestations. Manzoni, by bringing together his providentialist thinking and his Enlightenment attitude, weakens the actions of man with respect to the laws of nature, thus providing interesting suggestions for conceptually framing even the most modern pandemics.