Narratives of Mediterranean Space: Literature and Art across Land and Sea presents a comparative analysis of contemporary literary and visual narratives of movement and migration produced in Italian, Arabic and French. It analyzes how these works create a dialogue across the Mediterranean Sea. By paying attention to the multiple ways in which the Mediterranean is being narrated by contemporary writers and artists, Silvia Caserta aims to propose a reconceptualization of the Mediterranean as a polyphonic space of movement and resistance. The Mediterranean space that emerges from this study is a space that, by virtue of the instability and porosity of its geographical and cultural borders, is able to overcome normative dichotomies between north and south, east and west, local and global. This book proposes the Mediterranean is a fruitful area from which to investigate the wider contradictions of the contemporary global world while avoiding the traps of “Mediterraneanism”. For this reason, the book highlights the contradictions and dissonances that emerge from reading Mediterranean works, opening up multiple perspectives on the Sea and on the different lands that surround it.
Author(s): Silvia Caserta
Series: Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 266
City: Cham
Series Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Contents
About the Author
Chapter 1: What (is the) Mediterranean?
The Mediterranean as a Field of Study
A Narrative Perspective on the Contemporary Mediterranean
Italy and the Mediterranean
Mediterranean Narratives: Methodology and Corpus
Chapter 2: Narratives of the Sea: Contemporary Migration Across the Mediterranean
Narratives and Counter-Narratives of Migration
Part I: A Sea of Words in Lina Prosa’s Narrative Shipwreck
A Performative Narrative
A Suspended Simultaneity of Acts and Words
A Diachronic Simultaneity
Narrative Resistance in the Present and for the Future
Mediterranean Narrative Movement
Part II: The Windy Voices of Libyan Women—Migration and Resistance in Razan Moghrabi’s Novel
A Simultaneous, Diachronic, and Polyphonic Narrative Journey
Women of Tripoli in their Apartments…
… and Outside
Narrative Movement
Bahija’s Narrative of Migration
Chapter 3: Narratives of Land and Sea. The Island, the Boat, and the Lighthouse
Part I: The Island Narrative of Paolo Rumiz’s Il Ciclope
A Physical and Narrative Journey
The Composite and Contemporary Voice of the Mediterranean: Nature and Storytelling
A Polyphonic Narrative
A Mediterranean Mix of Languages
A Narrative Island
Land and Sea
The Lighthouse
Part II: A Video Narrative. Zineb Sedira’s Artistic Mediterranean
From Rumiz to Sedira Across the Mediterranean
Framing the Sea
A Trilogy of the Sea: The Centrality of a Decentralized Mediterranean
The Lighthouse
Mediterranean Art: The MuCEM and Sedira’s Work Within It
Chapter 4: Narratives of the Desert: Reconfiguring Movement Across the Sahara
Mediterranean Sea- and Land-scapes
Mediterranean Spaces: The Sea, the City, and the Desert
Al-Koni’s Local and Global Perspective
Al-Koni’s Desert Narrative / Narrative Desert
The In-between-ness of the Desert Passage
A Reconfigured Desert Community
Asouf’s Final Sacrifice
Emily Nasrallah’s Mediterranean Desert of Movement and Resistance
Chapter 5: Conclusion: Re-inventing the Odyssey
Bibliography
Index
