"Oltre la lingua franca". Il plurilinguismo mediterraneo di Elisa Chimenti

This article aims to investigate the interaction between the topic of Mediterranean lingua franca and the work of Elisa Chimenti, considering the case study of the unpublished novel "Khadija de l’île sarde". Writer, journalist, teacher and anthropologist, Chimenti travelled from Italy to Tunisia and ending in Morocco, where she finally chooses Tangier as her self-exile land. The article will first address the biography and the work of the author, and then it will analyse the way her writing recall - with significant differences - the “pidgin franco” that was common in the Mediterranean harbours between the XVI and the XIX century. Chimenti’s multi-linguistic style entangles the French language with Neapolitan, Italian, Deutsch, Spanish and Arabic, therefore establishing a language that is profoundly hybrid and prismatic: it is a mélange of figures of speech, Mediterranean traditions and cultures, where all the connections, references and mutual genealogies are finely crafted together.