Chronotopes of Hellenic Antiquity: The Strait of Reggio and Messina in Documents from the Grand Tour Era

Abstract

The dark tale of Scylla and Charybdis from Homer's Odyssey can be regarded as an enduring inspiration for visual and conceptual renditions of the sea and its myths. This paper focuses on the Strait between Calabria and Sicily as an allegoric geography or ‘setting’ of the myth for the travellers of the Grand Tour, by focusing on visual art by A.Kircher (1664) and G.Fortuyn (1773). Crossing the Strait was a sort of rite de passage, or a way to play out a sort of mythical descent into a territory still perceived as uncharted and obscure and an extension of the topos of Hellas. Contextualizing the Strait within the long-established ‘Homeric geography’ and how Southern Italy became imaginatively associated with myth-infused adventurousness and nostalgia for visiting European elites, the paper individuates the Strait as a geopolitical passage that reflects a rich history of cartographies and an allegory, which endure to the present day.