Ciuma: interferenţe cinematografice şi etnologice
The plague: cinematographic and ethnological interference

Summary/Abstract: The history of mankind has been marked by multiple socioeconomic, political, cultural and religious factors. In certain periods of the past and present, people encountered and still face invisible enemies and killers that take the form of epidemics / pandemics, the most recent being COVID-19, compared, for its disastrous impact on humanity, with the plague epidemics of the past. The plague has been described in chronicles, historical narratives, memoirs, literary works and folklore. In the contemporary era, the plague became the subject of film productions Travel Story (1983), Black Death (2010), The Physician (2013). Although these films abound in historical errors, they nevertheless present artistic and ethnocultural value by invoking important aspects of the plague epidemics, its symptomatic manifestations, zoomorphic symbols and human phobias being nuanced. In the Romanian folk traditions the plague is reflected in folk and magical medicine. The zoomorphic symbols of the plague – rats, mice and fleas – are part of some popular beliefs, therapeutic practices, fairy tales and games. In world literature, the plague generally has a quasi-negative image, some exceptions in this respect being offered by satirical writers for whom the vices of society are more disastrous than the plague

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