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Copyright by Martino Lovato 2015 The Dissertation Committee for Martino Lovato Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Harboring Narratives: Notes Towards a Literature of the Mediterranean Committee: Hélène Tissières, Supervisor Samer Ali Paola Bonifazio Tarek El-Ariss Barbara Harlow Norma Bouchard Harboring Narratives: Notes Towards a Literature of the Mediterranean by Martino Lovato, Laurea; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August, 2015 Dedication To all those suffering in the Mediterranean the calamity of war. To my family. Acknowledgements I owe my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Hélène Tissières, and to all the distinguished faculty members who served on my dissertation committee: Professors Samer Ali, Tarek El-Ariss, Paola Bonifazio, Norma Bouchard, and Barbara Harlow. Without their mentoring and advice, their rigor and insightful comments, this work would not have been possible. I am also forever indebted with The Program in Comparative Literature, and particularly with Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, César Salgado, and Lynn Wilkinson, for their constant encouragement and example. I am grateful to many programs, departments and study groups at the University of Texas at Austin, whose precious contributions allowed me advance in my research. My heartfelt thanks to the Department of French and Italian, and particularly to professors Daniela Bini and David Birdsong. I also want to thank The Middle Eastern Studies Department, The Center for European Studies, The European Union Center of Excellence at the University of Texas at Austin, particularly to professor Douglas Biow, The Medieval Studies Research Group and Alison Frazier, and The Ethnic and Third World Literatures Concentration. I am also thankful to the Graduate School at The University of Texas at Austin for the continuing endowed fellowship that allowed me to fully devote my time to completing this dissertation. v I also wish to thank Italian and French institutions that helped me in my research. In Italy, the Fondazione Istituto Cattaneo and The Forum Internazionale ed Europeo di Ricerche sull'Immigrazione (FIERI), and particuarly Eleonora Castagnone. In France, I want to thank all the staff and faculty of the Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme in Aix-en-Provence, and particularly professors Ghislaine Ailleume, Richard Jaquemond, Mathilde Favier, and Stéphane Baquey. Special thanks to Abdelmalek Smari, Baha` Taher, for their patience, help, and explanations about their work, and to Vera Dragone for allowing me to have access to the script of Vittorio De Seta’s Lettere dal Sahara. I also give my thanks to Karla Mallette, who gave me the first bibliography on which to work for my project, to Sharon Kinoshita and Brian Catlos, who gave me evidence that a community of scholars working on the Mediterranean shares not only research interests but also feelings and intentions. Finally, I thank all the friends and colleagues who have helped me in my research: André Roux, Gianluca Parolin, Francesca Biancani, Mariam Hamdy, Darouèche Bilal, Ettore Marchetti, Daniel Kahozi, Joseph Viscomi, and all the friends who made my life in Austin pleasurable. vi Harboring Narratives: Notes Towards a Literature of the Mediterranean Martino Lovato, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2015 Supervisor: Hélène Tissières Through the reading of several novels and movies produced in Arabic, French, and Italian between the 1980s and the 2000s, in this dissertation I provide a literary and transmedia contribution to the field of Mediterranean studies. Responding to the challenge brought by the regional category of Mediterranean to singular national and linguistic understandings of literature and cinema, I employ a comparative and multidisciplinary methodology to read novels by Baha’ Taher, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Abdelmalek Smari, and movies by film directors Merzak Allouache, Abdellatif Kechiche, and Vittorio De Seta. I define these works as “harboring narratives,” as they engage with the two shores of the Mediterranean in a complex process of interiorization and negotiation, opening routes of meaning across languages, societies and cultures. As they challenge constructions of otherness that materialize in present-day conflicts in the region, the works of these novelists and filmmakers give voice to a perspective on the Mediterranean radically different from that upheld by the “paradigms of discord.” Whereas according to these paradigms there is nothing in the Mediterranean but an iron curtain, these works present migration and vii conflict, historiography and religion, intimacy and translation as experiences shared across countries and societies in the region. By following routes of meaning that draw together the linguistic, the geographical, the economic, the historical, and the religious, I study how these novelists and filmmakers establish relationships between “horizons of belonging” and “elsewhere,” selfhood and otherness. In so doing, I respond to Kinoshita and Mallette’s call for challenging the “monolingualism” inherent in our contemporary ways of reading linguistic and literary traditions. As I show how the routes of meaning opened by these novelists and filmmakers across the region lead to hope that one day we will rejoice in sharing a common Mediterranean shore, however, I caution against easy enthusiasms. These novelists and filmmakers urge us to respond to the challenge of the present-day conflicts they address in their works, and a shared Mediterranean shore will eventually appear on the horizon only after we overcome monolingual conceptions of selfhood and otherness, setting sail towards a shore we have never seen. viii Table of Contents Chapter One .............................................................................................................1 Introduction I- The Human Mediterranean...................................................................................5 II- Harboring Narratives ........................................................................................12 III- Corpus Presentation .........................................................................................15 Chapter Two...........................................................................................................25 Voyage to a Relative North: The Crossing of Intangible Barriers in Merzak Allouache’s Harragas I- Introduction ........................................................................................................25 II- Leaving Mostaganem ........................................................................................31 III- Crossing Intangible Barriers ............................................................................43 IV- Conclusions .....................................................................................................48 Chapter Three.........................................................................................................50 The Weight of Blood: On the Quest for Justice in Baha’ Taher’s Love in Exile I- Introduction ........................................................................................................50 II- The Multiple Scales of a World Novel .............................................................53 III- Mulukiya, or the Weight or Blood...................................................................68 IV- Conclusions .....................................................................................................84 Chapter Four ..........................................................................................................87 The Isthmus on a Polytheist Sea: Bilingualism and Historiographic Fabulation in Abdelwahab Meddeb’s Phantasia I- Introduction ........................................................................................................87 II- The Isthmus on the Sea .....................................................................................98 ix III- Historiographic Fabulation ............................................................................118 IV- Conclusions ...................................................................................................131 Chapter Five .........................................................................................................134 The French Inconveniences of Sunna: Abdellatif Kechiche’s Modesty in La Graine et le Mulet I- Introduction ......................................................................................................134 II- French like all Others ......................................................................................141 III- The Grande Soirée .........................................................................................154 IV- Conclusions ...................................................................................................162 Chapter Six...........................................................................................................164 As When a Troop of Jolly Sailors Row: The Wished Shore in Abdelmalek Smari’s Fiamme in Paradiso and Vittorio De Seta’s Lettere dal Sahara I- Introduction ......................................................................................................164 II- A Night in Constantine ...................................................................................173