This book explores the role of Mediterranean imaginaries in one of the preeminent tropes of Italian history: the formation or 'making of' Italians. While previous scholarship on the construction of Italian identity has often focused too narrowly on the territorial notion of the nation-state, and over-identified Italy with its capital, Rome, this book highlights the importance of the Mediterranean Sea to the development of Italian collective imaginaries. From this perspective, this book re-interprets key historical processes and actors in the history of modern Italy, and thereby challenges mainstream interpretations of Italian collective identity as weak or incomplete. Ultimately, it argues that Mediterranean imaginaries acted as counterweights to the solidification of a 'national' Italian identity, and still constitute alternative but equally viable modes of collective belonging.

Autorentext
Claudio Fogu is Associate Professor of Italian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: Mediterranean Imaginaries2. Making Italians, Making Southerners3. The Fishing Net and the Spider Web4. Homo Mediterraneus5. Epiphanic Mediterraneanism6. Between Imperium and Emporion7. Fascist Mediterraneanism8. From Mare Nostrum to Mare Aliorum9. Coda: The Mediterranean Quest(ion)