«La lingua è terra». L’influenza del dispatrio e dell’italiano come “lingua-distanza” sull’ibridismo del romanzo Il profugo di Younis Tawfik

Starting from the complex contemporary scenario that characterizes world literature and from the perspectives that derive from it, the aim of this pro- ject is to analyse if, and how, the experience of expatriation and the adoption of Italian as a “distance-language” affect the linguistic, thematic, genre, and focus hybridism present in Younis Tawfik’s novel Il profugo. Through an overall analysis of the Iraqi writer’s poetics, I will underline how these two factors condition the formulation of the novel as a “world-work”, in which lyrical interludes alternate with digressions on minor characters, and essay inserts. I will also highlight how the operation carried out by Tawfik re- sponds to the need to contaminate forms of the Arab tradition with those typical of the Italian one, which bases its narrative on the novel form, to pro- duce a creolisation that is both formal and linguistic.