La rappresentazione degli arabi nella letteratura italiana: uno, nessuno, centomila

This article examines the representation of Arabs in Italian literature, tracing a long and layered history of images, encounters, and stereotypes from the Middle Ages to the postmodern period. Moving from Dante, Boccaccio, and Ariosto to twentieth-century and contemporary authors, the article shows how the Arab world has occupied a complex place in the Italian literary imagination: at times admired as a source of philosophical, scientific, and cultural knowledge, at times reduced to an exotic, colonial, or adversarial figure. Particular attention is given to travel literature, Levantine writing, the memory of Arab Sicily, and postmodern narrative. Through authors such as Salgari, Marinetti, Cialente, Pea, Ungaretti, Calvino, Sciascia, and Eco, the article argues that the “Arab” in Italian literature is never a fixed identity, but a shifting figure through which Italy has repeatedly negotiated its own cultural, Mediterranean, and historical self-understanding.