Mapping a female Mediterranean : tracing a fluid cartography of the Mediterranean in the female literary imaginary

Abstract

This dissertation addresses the lack of critical discussion within Mediterranean studies that takes into account female voices in the construction of the Mediterranean imaginary. By tracing a connection between women and the Mediterranean waters, this dissertation tentatively maps a 'female Mediterranean‘, thereby presenting a counter-narrative to the phallocentric myth of Homer‘s Odyssey. The first chapter tracks the changing perception of Mediterranean women from prehistory to classical times, with an emphasis on their association with fertility, nature, and monstrous otherness. A link between the fluidity of the abject female body and the fluid cartography of the Mediterranean is then established in the second chapter through a discussion of the mutually porous borders of woman‘s body and the Mediterranean geography. In the last chapter, a female literary cartography of the Mediterranean is charted through a close analysis of Françoise Sagan‘s Bonjour Tristesse, Assia Djebar‘s The Mischief, Deborah Levy‘s Hot Milk, and Elena Ferrante‘s The Lost Daughter. These novels weave the experience of becoming a woman or being a mother with the Mediterranean seascape and configure this geography as a personal space where women encounter themselves and their otherness. Reflections on conceiving the Mediterranean as a female oikos bring this odyssey in the uncharted female Mediterranean to a close.