's book chapter on "Elusive Mediterraneans. Reading Beyond Nation," which deals with conceptions and representations of the Mediterranean in Maltese literature, but also questions notions of "Mediterranean Literature," has been published by de Gruyter in the book, Sea of Literatures: Towards a Theory of Mediterranean Literature (2023).
The editors of the book are Angela Fabris, Albert G枚schl and Steffen Schneider.The many contributors include Karla Mallette, Sharon Kinoshita, Iain Chambers. Sara Izzo, and Daniel G. K枚nig.
ELUSIVE MEDITERRANEANS
Malta supposedly lies at the 鈥渉别补谤迟鈥 of the Mediterranean and Mediterraneanists expect its literature to be something like the very 鈥渆蝉蝉别苍肠别鈥 of the Mediterranean region, an expression, as it were, of its 鈥渞ich culture and identity,鈥 of Mediterranean connectivity.
And yet, Maltese literature in Maltese has, all in all, contributed little to the Mediterranean imaginary. It has bought into European stereotypes of Mediterranean spirit, culture, identity, and unity deconstructed by Michael Herzfeld and others, with their roots in colonial perspectives of Mediterranean backwardness. unruliness, and seductiveness.
The Maltese Pre-Independence Romantics and the Post-Independence Modernists were busy constructing, and recalibrating, the national imaginary, while the Postnational, Cosmopolitan generation that emerged in the 1990s, looked beyond the national and the regional.
READING BEYOND NATION
But there are notable exceptions, like Poet Antoine Cassar, with his long poems Passaport and Mappa tal-Mediterran, and Walid Nabhan, the Amman born Palestinian Maltese writer with his Prize-Wnning autobiographical novel, L-E偶odu ta膵-膴Ikonji (The Exodus of the Storks), who acknowledge the discursive nature of representations of the Mediterranean and engage with them critically.
This study explores Maltese literature鈥檚 engagement with the Mediterranean imaginary and asks whether this evaluation has anything significant to contribute towards a theory of Mediterranean literature.
