Chapter «Il estoient si mauvés que por leur mauvestés furent il tuit noiés». Diluvi e carestie nelle profezie di Merlino mediolatine e romanze: un’indagine

The essay presents an analysis of how different prophetic textual traditions depicted catastrophic natural events between the 12th and early 14th centuries. The focus is particularly on the Latin and Romance prophetic corpora associated with the prophet Merlin: from the Prophetiae Merlini included in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britannie, to their Old French translation preserved in the manuscript of Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, n.a.f 4166; from the prophecies compiled in the Prophecies de Merlin to their Italian translation in Paulino Pieri’s Storia di Merlino. The study explores the various ways in which medieval prophecies provided an ideal space for representing nature, also reflecting on the methods of linguistic and cultural translation.