“Viaggio d’un poeta straniero nella Sicilia normanna: dislocazione e alterità nei versi di Ibn Qalāqis”, in Medioevo e Moderno. Fenomenologia delle rappresentazioni dell'alterità fra Oriente e Occidente, II: Esplorazioni, visioni, tempi, spazi. Atti del XII Colloquio Internazionale Medioevo romanzo e orientale (Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche, Catania, 21-22 novembre 2019), a cura di L. Bottini, M. Cassarino, A. Chraibi, E. Creazzo, M. Marchetti, Rubbettino Editore, Soveria Mannelli, 2021, pp. 151-168.

This study aims to examine the representation of displacement and alienation in several odes by the Egyptian poet Ibn Qalaˉqis, that provide an account of his stay in the Normand Sicily, at the service of the prestigious qaˉʾid Abuˉ l-Qaˉ sim. Facing the uncertainty of patronage relationships, Ibn Qalaˉqis transmutes the experience of his journey into a process of redefining his own cultural and social identity. Therefore, his attempt to cross into the otherness constantly entails a solid connection with the literary tradition to contain the effects of the cultural divergence and contrast the adversity of the present time. In particular, the representation of spaces on the backdrop responds to the requirement, to bring unfamiliar contents back to well-known patterns. Indeed, the recourse to themes and motifs from the classical repertoire of longing to the homeland (al-h. anıˉn ilaˉ l-awt. aˉn) and the literary of the aliens (adab al-ghurabaˉʾ) corpus, as well as the use of rhetorical devices in the process of encoding meaning, corresponds to a precise strategy to depict the encounter with the other and the elsewhere.