Mappe di colonie e immagini postcoloniali. Un viaggio nella lirica di Hugo Pratt

• Main Author: Olimpia Affuso
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Mimesis Edizioni, Milano 2015-12-01
• Series: Im@go. A Journal of the Social Imaginary
• Subjects: colonialism; stereotypes; graphic novels; imagination; travel; estrangement
• Online Access: http://cab.unime.it/journals/index.php/IMAGO/article/view/1129

In July 1967 Hugo Pratt wrote Una ballata del mare salato and gives birth to Corto Maltese the character who will lead Comics into Novel’s sphere. Corto was born in 1887. He is a sailor-pirate and lives his life going back and forward from the real world to the oneiric one. His adventures begin in the Pacific Ocean and end in the Gulf of Mexico. While the story develops the readers find him in the places of the Italian colonialism. Corto’s journeys in Africa are told in 4 short stories: Nel nome di Allah misericordioso e compassionevole, L’ultimo colpo, ...e di altri Romei e Giuliette, Leopardi. In this essay I am going to ask myself if Pratt, who is not a post-colonial writer, can be considered the forefront of a postcolonial reflection. According to authors like Bhabba, the peculiarity of postcolonial criticism is based on the attempt of giving back to colonized people the subjectivity colonialism has stolen. Could Pratt, with these graphic novels, have been successful in this purpose? Focusing on the categories of postcolonial literature, that is what I want to investigate in this article.