Online Collective Poetry Recitation Performance during COVID-19 Outbreak

Online Collective Poetry Recitation Performance during COVID-19 Outbreak

Yongwen Peng

In human history, the impact of epidemic outbreaks on human society is much worse than that of other natural disaster because the effects of viruses are often invisible in the early stages. Viruses silently sicken or kill thousands of people, collapse families, create panic, and even damage society’s function. With the outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019, interesting forms of online collective poetry recitation performance emerged from different parts of China since Feburary 2020. This article presents three online collective poetry recitation works so as to analyze their two functions: as a theraputic way to deal with people’s fear of the virus and to generate positive emotions, such as love and courage, and as a ritual to strengthen people’s sense of identity as Chinese, bringing hundreds of millions of Chinese people together and gathering a powerful force to overcome the epidemic.

2020

covid-19, Therapy, ritual, online collective poetry recitation

10.15212/CAET/2020/6/11

Creative Arts in Education and Therapy

Inspirees International B.V.

Special aspects of education, Visual arts