Mediterranean resistance in Paolo Rumiz's Il Ciclope : the island and the lighthouse

Abstract

Within the growing scholarly attention, in the field of Italian Studies, devoted to contemporary travel writing, on the one hand, and to writers coming from the geo-historical ‘margins’ of the peninsula, on the other, Paolo Rumiz’s works have sparked critical interest in recent years. In contrast with the prevailing reading of Rumiz’s work as mostly concerned with Eastern Europe, in this essay I assess the centrality of the Mediterranean in the author’s narrative imaginary, as it emerges in Il Ciclope (2015). Drawing on geocritical and ecocritical theories, I show how Rumiz’s Mediterranean island – where the real and imaginary travel of Il Ciclope takes place – narratively reveals itself as a space that comprises land and sea at the same time; a space that, while being localised, can also address global concerns, and that, from its supposedly marginal position in the global world, can become a centre of critical thinking.