Geographies of Myth and Places of Identity –  The Strait of Scylla and Charybdis in the Modern  Imagination

by  Marco Benoît Carbone    

Turning to a region of South Italy associated with the heritage of Greater Greece and the geographies of

Homer’s Odyssey, Marco Benoît Carbone delivers a historical and ethnographic treatment of how places defined in public imagination and media by force of their associated historical events become sites of memory and identity, as their landscape, heritage, and mythologies turn into insignia of a romanticised antiquity.

For the ancient Greeks, Homer had set the marine monsters of the Odyssey in the Strait between Calabria and Sicily. Since then, this Mediterranean passage has been glowing with the literary aura of its mythological landmarks. Travellers and tourists have played Odysseus by re-enacting his journey. Scholars and explorers have explained the myths as metaphors of whirlpools and marine fauna. The iconic Strait and village of Scilla have turned into chrono-topic place-myths and playgrounds, defined by their literary aura and the region’s ancient heritage, inspiring representations in media, travels and tourism.

Carbone observes the enduring impact of Hellas on the real Strait today. The fascinations of artists and travellers, and their continuous rekindling of cultural and visual traditions of place have intersected withphilhellenic Western historiographies, shaping local policies, public histories, views of development and tourism, and forms of Hellenicist identitarianism. Elements of society have celebrated the landscape of the Odyssey, appropriated Homer as their imagined heirs and fellow citizen, and even purported themselves as the original Europeans, thus pandering to outdated ideological appropriations of ‘classical’ antiquity and exclusionary, West-centric views of the Mediterranean.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Notes on Places and People
List of Illustrations

1. The Strait of Homer and the Strait of Reality
   2. Chronotopes of Hellas: The Grand Tour
   3. Mediterranean Place-Myths
   4. Myths of Myths: Mapping the Odyssey
   5. Materialising Heritage: Tourism in Scilla
   6. Denizens of the Odyssey
   7. Conclusions: (Re)-Imagining the Strait

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Review and complimentary copies

Available Jan 2022. Pre-orders and copies from Bloomsbury.com

Tags: Bloomsbury, Mito, Scilla, Strait of Scylla