MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES | ISLANDS AS METAPHOR | SPRING 2022

Insula in Fabula: Sardinia as Narrative and Text

Francesco Marco Aresu • Wesleyan University

April 18th @ 6pm • Daniel Family Commons

Obsessed with its self-representation, Sardinian literature typically textualizes and narrates Sardinia’s own antinomies: on the one hand, alterity, isolation, and incantatorial atemporality; on the other hand, ethnic métissage, historical stratigraphy, and cultural hybridity. This talk analyzes how these antinomies inform the first novel by Sardinian novelist, playwright, and poet Sergio Atzeni (1952–1995): the Apologo del giudice bandito (1986). It argues that the Apologo epitomizes and inscribes into its plot Sardinia’s insular dialectic between resistance and occupation, identity and assimilation, marginality and integration. Lying at the intersection of Romance philology, narratology, and postcolonial theory, the talk presents Sardinia as a spatial and textual construct that engages dynamically with its narrative representations.

Islands as Metaphor and Method
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