Abstract

This article focuses on analyzing Elisa Chimenti’s collection of short stories titled: Le sortilège et autres contes séphardites [The Spell and other Sephardi Tales] under a Mediterranean Studies perspective. Elisa Chimenti is a woman writer who moved at the end of the XIX century from Italy to Morocco with her family and lived there most of her life. This ‘inverted’ migratory movement compared to what we assist today made the author a promoter of Mediterranean culture in modern and contemporary times. This Mediterranean culture is a perfect balance between Mediterraneaness and Mediterraneanism. The former is a term I use to indicate understanding and acceptance of the differences present in the basin, which is opposed to the latter which is based, instead, on sameness and similarities (Hertzfeld 2005: 46). While they both continue to exist, I adopt Adnan Husains’ approach as perfect balance to express the Mediterranean culture, and argue that is not Elisa Chimenti herself but her literary production and, specifically, the collection of Le sortilège et autres contes séphardites which represents this way of thinking about the Mediterranean