Kollektiv und Individuum, Bild und Text

Using the example of the Dance of Death of Bern, this article points out that it is not alone the contents, but the divergent communication modes of image and text that are interwoven and cooperate, while each maintains its distinct message: the text emphasizes the individual due to its successive mode of communication, the image’s simultaneous transmission of information focusses on the collective. By these means, the Dance of Death expresses its admonition and induces the recipient to critical introspection.

6. Enduring images

‘Enduring images’ describes the various images which have been attached to plague. These include graphic metaphors, like the arrows of Apollo and the swords of biblical angels, which symbolize its causes; and literary conventions, such as those of Thucydides and Boccaccio about the disruption of families and societies, which summarize its consequences. Over time, new icons have been added to them, such as plague-saints and plague-doctors, and metaphors were borrowed from other contexts, like the Dance of Death and visions of the Apocalypse. Taken together, they determined how plague was imagined in the past. Ultimately, images of plague have a continuous history, invented and then elaborated over the centuries.