Mediterranean Layers of Interpretation

The Mediterranean Interpretation(s) cluster focuses on the history of ideas about, and knowledge of, the Mediterranean region, its artistic representations, and its discourses. It takes account of the fact that the Mediterranean has been tangible from the earliest times as a highly semanticised space charged with all kinds of mythological, religious, cultural, or ideological attributions. The Mediterranean thus becomes a space of interpretation that lends narratives and representations to its places and their connections. One task of the cluster will be to identify and systematise figures of interpretation of the Mediterranean, to determine their origins and observe their evolution in order to trace their links with other discourses and with the history of Mediterranean knowledge.