« Les semeurs de peste » : le poison entre théories miasmatique et contagionniste Les Fiancés et L’Histoire de la colonne infâme d’Alessandro Manzoni

In the two works of Alessandro Manzoni, Les Fiancés and L’Histoire de la colonne infâme, the shared historical backdrop – the plague of Milan from 1629 to 1631 – is constructed with the help of three complementary conceptions of epidemics, based on theories of religion, miasma, and contagion. These visions converge around a sense of the plague as the evil poison par excellence.