Mediterranean Perspectives: Mediterranean Imaginaries and the Making of Italians

Fogu, Claudio

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.

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2020-11-24

Format: Hardcover

ISBN-13: 9783030598563

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-59857-0

Dimensions: 210cm x148cm

Pages: 296