Da Paolo Cognetti a Mohammed Makhzangi: la letteratura mediterranea ecologico-ambientale

This article examines the relationship between literature and the environment through an ecocritical perspective, bringing into dialogue the works of Italian writer Paolo Cognetti and Egyptian writer Mohammed Makhzangi. After outlining ecocriticism as an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of literary, cultural, and environmental studies, the article explores how ecological concerns take different forms in contemporary Italian and Arabic literature. In The Eight Mountains, Cognetti represents the Alpine landscape as a space of memory, resistance, and tension between rural life and urban modernity. In Makhzangi’s short stories, by contrast, the environment opens onto a more transglobal and multispecies dimension, where animals become central figures through which to question human violence, ecological fragility, and the place of human beings within the living world. By comparing these two authors, the article argues that contemporary Mediterranean literature can become a critical space for rethinking the interdependence between humans, animals, and the environment.