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Anne Geoffroy (Université Versailles Saint Quentin)[télécharger la proposition]Following the latest catastrophic acqua alta in November 2019 and the current Covid-19 pandemic, Venice effectively provides a mirror to the world when it comes to natural disasters. Coping with natural calamities is a challenge the city has been facing since its foundation. This paper will be dealing with the representation of flooding and plague from an early modern British perspective and study to what extent these events participate in the cultural perception of Venice. How is the City-state’s management of these disasters analysed or imagined?  The representation of the City’s resilience will be looked at through the prism of travellers’ accounts, histories, and fictional works. Starting with a lexical overview of key words, this paper argues that British authors predominantly reproduced the lagoon mythology created by Venetian historiographers. Natural disasters are mainly seen through the lens of social and political contexts rather than the contemporary scientific debates. It further considers how fictional discourses explore Biblical, metaphorical or satirical narratives allowing insights into the City’s various strategies of survival.