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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.
Through a comparative analysis of contemporary literary and visual narratives that dialogue across the Mediterranean Sea, in this dissertation I apply the category of narrative to the field of Mediterranean Studies. Working across different genres, different media, and different languages, I explore the possible configuration of a Mediterranean narrative that would take into account the multiple articulations of a real and imaginary Mediterranean space. I focus on alternative narratives of migration, of the interconnection between land and sea, and of the desert, through a comparative reading of Italian literary works by Paolo Rumiz and Lina Prosa, Libyan novels by Ibrahim Al-Koni and Razan Moghrabi, video installations by the French-Algerian artist Zineb Sedira, and a short story by the Lebanese writer Emily Nasrallah. How can these narratives of and in the Mediterranean help us understand the ways in which the contemporary Mediterranean is experienced, and the role it might have to play within the current dynamics of globalization? In this dissertation, I argue that the two dimensions of living and narrating the Mediterranean cannot be separated, but that they are, rather, intimately interconnected. I show that Mediterranean narratives can provide alternative ways of thinking, conceptualizing, and ultimately experiencing the Mediterranean, both within its permeable and porous boundaries and beyond that, in the space of the global world. The narratives I put in dialogue with each other counteract a mainstream narrative of the Mediterranean as backward and immobile, when compared to Northern Europe, and as a conflict zone and a barrier, which separates Europe from the threatening Arab world. Thus, these narratives all respond to Iain Chamber’s call for “dissonant” narratives, whose “disturbing” voices are able to create the Mediterranean as a postcolonial space of agency and resistance, where alternative modernities can also be imagined. The Mediterranean that ultimately emerges from the interaction of its narrative voices is a dialogic space of differences that, while retaining their own specificities, “encounter” each other without necessarily melding. In the dichotomy that globalization proclaims between assimilation and proliferation of difference, alternative Mediterranean narratives occupy, and create, an in-between space, suspended in its unresolved, and potential, condition of liminality.
Cataloging the sights, smells, sounds, and features common to the many peoples who share the Mediterranean, this fascinating portrait of a place and its civilizations is sure to appeal to active and armchair travelers alike. 58 illustrations.
Situated in a Mediterranean landscape, the Maeght Foundation is a unique Modernist museum, product of an extraordinary collaboration between the architect, Jos?uis Sert, and the artists whose work was to be displayed there. The architecture, garden design and art offer a rare opportunity to see work in settings conceived in active collaboration with the artists themselves. By focusing on the relationship between this art foundation and its Arcadian setting, including Joan Mir?labyrinth, George Braque's pool, Tal-Coat's mosaic wall and Giacometti's terrace, Jan K. Birksted demonstrates how the building articulates many of the ideas that preoccupied this group of artists during the culminating years of their lives. The study pays special attention to the ways in which architecture can shape the experience of time, and addresses the Modernist desire for wilderness and its problematic roots in the classical Mediterranean ideal. In showing how the design of the Maeght Foundation is a Modernist representation of Mediterranean culture, the author has developed an interpretation of architecture that accommodates not only the architect's handling of material or function, but shows as well how it can be the embodiment of a particular vision of space and time.
The Narrative Mediterranean: Beyond France and the Maghreb examines literary texts by writers from the Maghreb and positions them in direct relation to increasingly querulous debates on the shifting identity of the modern Mediterranean. This book argues that reading works by writers such as Albert Camus and Tahar Ben Jelloun alongside authors such as Fawzi Mellah and Mahi Binebine in a transnational rather than binary interpretive framework transcends a colonial and postcolonial bind in which France is the dominant point of reference. While focusing on works in French, this book also examines Maghrebi authors who write in Italian. The texts examined in The Narrative Mediterranean critique narrow identitarian labeling, warn against sectarianism, and announce the necessity of multiple forms of translation and historical rewritings. Their modes of expression differ as they range from poetic to baroque to realist, as do their concerns, which include –but are not limited to—the human condition, gender identity, and emigration. Claudia Esposito explains how these writers operate between and outside the confines of several nations, tracing imagined affiliative horizons, and consequently address questions of multiple forms of cultural, political, sexual and existential belonging. Esposito convincingly demonstrates that in a Mediterranean context, moving between nations means to be in both foreign and familiar physical, affective and intellectual spaces.
This volume offers an overview of the rich narrative material circulating in the medieval Mediterranean. As a multilingual and multicultural zone, the Eastern Mediterranean offered a broad market for tales in both oral and written form and longer works of fiction, which were translated and reworked in order to meet the tastes and cultural expectations of new audiences, thus becoming common intellectual property of all the peoples around the Mediterranean shores. Among others, the volume examines for the first time popular eastern tales, such as Kalila and Dimna, Sindbad, Barlaam and Joasaph, and Arabic epics together with their Byzantine adaptations. Original Byzantine love romances, both learned and vernacular, are discussed together with their Persian counterparts and with later adaptations of western stories. This combination of such disparate narrative material aims to highlight both the wealth of medieval storytelling and the fundamental unity of the medieval Mediterranean world. Contributors are Carolina Cupane, Faustina Doufikar-Aerts, Massimo Fusillo, Corinne Jouanno, Grammatiki A. Karla, Bettina Krönung, Renata Lavagnini, Ulrich Moennig, Ingela Nilsson, Claudia Ott, Oliver Overwien, Panagiotis Roilos, Julia Rubanovich, Ida Toth, Robert Volk and Kostas Yiavis.
“Will spark debate . . . and hopefully further research into points of contact between the monotheistic religions, and others.” —The Levantine Review While devotional practices are usually viewed as mechanisms for reinforcing religious boundaries, in the multicultural, multiconfessional world of the Eastern Mediterranean, shared shrines sustain intercommunal and interreligious contact among groups. Heterodox, marginal, and largely ignored by central authorities, these practices persist despite aggressive, homogenizing nationalist movements. This volume challenges much of the received wisdom concerning the three major monotheistic religions and the “clash of civilizations,” as contributors examine intertwined religious traditions along the shores of the Near East from North Africa to the Balkans.
This book critically assesses mobilities across the Mediterranean Basin and explores the implications of changing European relationships in the light of observations of the intersectional formation and evolution of identities, behavior and ideas. Further, it discusses the timely topic of a new diversity of migration and mobility practices (personal and virtual mobilities in terms of gender, motivations, emotional geographies, impacts, and circulation) from conceptual and empirical perspectives, providing new insights for scholars and policy makers in the context of urgently needed national and European policies. Mediterranean Mobilities is based on fieldwork in European and non-European countries and on mutual learning and transfer of knowledge among scholars from nine universities in Morocco, Algeria, Israel, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain, as well as stakeholders in Europe and North Africa. The results stem from the FP7 Marie Curie IRSES project MEDCHANGe coordinated by the book editor. The project comprises fieldwork conducted by distinguished scholars in Europe, Morocco, Algeria and Israel, generating original data and findings on fast changing realities. This book appeals to researchers but also serves as a basic or complementary text in advanced undergraduate, graduate or master’s courses on mobilities/migration, regionalization, cooperation, international relations and Mediterranean studies as part of teaching programs in geography, sociology, international political sciences, as well as programs focusing on regional studies (e.g., European integration). It is also of interest to the professional and institutional community in the wide area of Mediterranean politics, economy and society as well as a general readership.
This book invites readers to think of Mediterranean cultures as interconnected worlds, seen in light of how they evolve, disappear, are reborn and perpetually transform. This perspective intends to build bridges between the Northern and Southern coasts of the sea in order to broaden and deepen our understanding of current evolutions in Mediterranean worlds, at the cultural, literary, artistic and geopolitical levels. As Paul Valéry suggested, we can consider this plural space from the perspective of the intense cultural, economic and human exchanges which have always characterized the Mare Nostrum. We can also consider Mediterranean worlds within an open enactive process, deeply exploring their evolution between nature and culture, examining the natural environment and the transforming relationships between humans and non-humans. The writers and researchers in Re-storying Mediterranean Worlds call for a dialog between the two coasts in order to connect what has been broken. In this volume, they highlight an intercultural and creolized conscience, traversing the Mediterranean worlds – including Italian, French and Tunisian cultures, but also migrations from, to and within the region – and transcending any idea of communitarian withdrawal. These essays express the urgent need to shift from an understanding of migration as suffering to the notion that mobility is an unalienable right, building foundations for a new idea of global citizenship.
In this wide-ranging survey of ancient Greek narrative from archaic epic to classical prose, Alex Purves shows how stories unfold in space as well as in time. She traces a shift in authorial perspective, from a godlike overview to the more focused outlook of human beings caught up in a developing plot, inspired by advances in cartography, travel, and geometry. Her analysis of the temporal and spatial dimensions of ancient narrative leads to new interpretations of important texts by Homer, Herodotus, and Xenophon, among others, showing previously unnoticed connections between epic and prose. Drawing on the methods of classical philology, narrative theory, and cultural geography, Purves recovers a poetics of spatial representation that lies at the core of the Greeks' conception of their plots.