Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci

The Sirens’ Chant: Bloom & Chichikov : When the footnote becomes the text, the text the footnote Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci New ed edition

This book concentrates on two major modern Homeric 'wanderings', stemming from two radically different geo-timeframes which were never previously juxtaposed in such a radical dialectical manner: Chichikov’s wanderings around Rus in Gogol's 'Dead Souls', and Bloom’s one-day Dublin path in Joyce's 'Ulysses'. Challenging this oxymoronic interaction, the author, exploiting an interdisciplinary approach interposes these two main meanderings with two other odysseys as a sub-narrative: Nikolai’s meanderings in Bely’s 'Petersburg' and the Joad family's along the 66 Highway in Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath'. This shows how authors in different times and geo hubs, having different ideologies, appertaining to different classes and societies are dealing with the same problems, having parallel exciting 'answers' and harbouring a strange form of humour.