Geographies of Myths and Places of Identity: The Strait of Scylla and Charybdis in the Modern Imagination Available to Purchase

There are certain places on earth that exude literary and cultural imageries. One of them is surely the turbulent Strait of Mediterranean Sea between Reggio Calabria and Messina, Sicily, that now inspires a scholarly study by young and eclectic scholar, Marco Benoît Carbone. A native of Calabria and lecturer at Brunel University in London, Carbone returns to his origins with a newly acquired cultural background, to perform a fascinating ethnographic and cultural reading of this geographical corner of Italy. The narrow passage of waters between the Tyrrhenian and the Ionian Sea keeps living off the mythologies it once generated, principally the famous sea monsters, Scylla, an abyss-dwelling swallower, and Charybdis, a six-headed, canine snatcher. The contemporary use of the Homeric past and the theoretical as well as experiential attachment to ancient symbols is evident in the Strait's geography through representations such as the monsters’ statues in the town center, the...