A conference by dr. Toni Veneri, University of Trieste. Event in collaboration with the Società Dante Alighieri in Haifa.
Young Italian scholars travelling between East and West
Young Italian scholars travelling between East and WestLEO AFRICANUS AND HIS MULTIFACETED IDENTITYA conference by dr. Toni Veneri, University of Trieste.Event in collaboration with the Società Dante Alighieri in Haifa.Al-Hasan al-Wazzan, better known as Leo Africanus, was born in Granada, shortly before Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile took over the city in 1492. After moving to Fes in Morocco and after completing his studies, al-Hasan began travelling across Northern Africa on business and diplomatic missions for the kings of Maghreb: he repeatedly crossed the desert, reaching Timbuktu, the kingdoms of Sudan and Egypt, and the land of the Berbers; he even sailed to Constantinople and visited Mecca during a ritual pilgrimage. In 1518, on his way back from a mission to Egypt, al-Hasan was captured by a Christian pirate and given as a gift to pope Leo X: one year later he coverted to Christianity and regained his freedom as Johannis Leo de Medicis.The ambiguous figure of Johannis Leo Africanus has been read in many different ways: a perfect Renaissance scholar; the guardian of Arab and Islamic tradition; a suspicious if not dangerous trespasser of geographical and religious boundaries; a Moroccan national hero; an example of cultural mediation between East and West; an historical source of inspiration for our present day cosmopolitanism.This presentation will briefly review those events, by paying special attention to the rediscovery of Leo Africanus, marked by the success of Amin Maalouf novel Léon l'Africain (1986) and by the publication of Trickster Travels (2006), by historian Natalie Zemon Davies. Toni Veneri lives in Trieste, where, after the archivist qualification (2009), he obtained in 2011 his PhD in Italian Literature and was appointed "cultore della materia" in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. Besides acting as Director of the Istituto Gramsci del Friuli Venezia Giulia, and working as high school teacher (Literature, History, Latin), he is currently completing his post-doctoral research at the University of Haifa. His areas of interest overlap: the literary and scientific construction of space in late Medieval and early modern times; travel literature in its encounters with the history of cartography, art, print and diplomacy; theoretical issues between history and literature.Event in Italian.Thursday, February 27th, 2014, at 19:00Italian Cultural Inastituterehov Meir Rutberg 12 – Haifa