Plague and superstitions at the Festival Off d'Avignon
Audio 48:30
“The Journal of the Year of the Plague”, according to Daniel Defoe, at the Festival d'Avignon, from July 7 to 31, 2021. © Passage Production
By: Geneviève Delrue
51 mins
Publicity
World Religions - Sunday July 25, 2021 - 11.10 a.m. - 12 p.m. (Paris time)
1665, the plague fell on the city of London. The richest flee to the countryside, the poor are left to their fate. While the city officials put in place very strict health measures to stem the epidemic such as the confinement of the affected houses, fear gives free rein to religious interpretations but also to superstitions of all kinds with charlatans, prophets of doom, illuminated people. which bloom in abundance on this favorable soil. In 1722, the English writer
Daniel Defoe
publishes "
The Journal of the Year of the Plague
"
which chronicles life in London during the great epidemic through the eyes of a wealthy Protestant merchant who chose to stay in the city.
A first-hand testimony of this Puritan torn between reason and the wrath of God, but who rejects supernatural explanations.
The
director Cyril Le Grix
translated and adapted this text interpreted by the
actor Thibaut Corrion.
"
Le Chemin des estives
" (Flammarion) by Charles Wright
In the summer of 2019, two aspiring Jesuits,
Charles Wright
and Benoît Parsac, set off without a penny in their pocket, nor a cell phone on the roads of Limousin, towards the Abbey of Notre-Dame-des-Neiges in Ardèche. A 700 km route through the Massif Central during which they will have to count on the generosity of this France of forgotten territories.
“
Le chemin des estives
”
tells the story of this spiritual journey and this experience of being stripped away in these “last enclaves of silence and freedom”. Far from noise, speed, connection, statistics, for Charles Wright, who then seeks the path of his life and questions his vocation, the Massif Central is an open-air hermitage.
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Avignon 2021
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