Mā-bayn el-widdyān: On the road. The emotional path of migration to/from Southern Tunisia and Western Libya through a Few Examples from Folk Heritage’s Literature

Both in standard and vernacular Arabic the term wādī does not only refers to a stream, but also indicates a dry creek among valleys which serves as a path for tribes and families during migration seasons. Besides the essential historical and social considerations on a pre-colonial/transnational pluralism of the area between Tataouine (Southern Tunisia) and az-Zawiyah (Western Libya) [Anderson 2014], the collection of vernacular literary corpora and gnomic expressions of these two microcultures villageoises homogènes [Breteau 1990], constantly reflects migration’s process as a culturally grounded on pluralism one. A data that enshrines the importance of the centuries-old and still little explored Tunisian-Libyan collective memory and identity [al-Khaṣkhūṣī 2007; Yoda 2005] as a case study. Through a holistic methodology which provides for the employment of linguistic, rhetorical and semantic frameworks of analysis, the aim of this paper is to carry out an ethnopoetic investigation on selected examples from Tunisian-Libyan vernacular literary collection concerning subjects such as migration/identities on the move [Breteau 1990; al-Marzūqī 1967]. The analysis’ main goal is depicting the common and distinctive features in using the cultural data within the addressed area. Furthermore, great attention will be paid to the artistic, didactic and functional role of traditional literary corpora among these communities [Khariyyif 1985] whose cultural survival is threatened by the ambitions of rapid modernization [Benmimoun 2008]. Finally, since new challenges are interesting both Tunisia and Libya by 2011, cultural embedded investigations have a key role in better understanding the evolution of pluralism in the reference area.