Guest Lecture - Tidalectic Rewritings of the Atlantic: Blue Humanities and Postcolonial Counter-Canons

Abstract

This lecture outlines a Blue Humanities approach to post-decolonial literature grounded in “tidalectics”, a framework that understands water (oceans, seas, and aquatic spaces more broadly) as an active force shaping history, memory, and ecological thought. Rather than treating water as mere setting, the tidalectic perspective highlights its cyclical movements, its capacity to carry trauma, and its role in unsettling linear, Eurocentric narratives of the Atlantic world. The lecture then turns to three literary rewritings, Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s Caliban, J.M. Coetzee’s Foe, and Derek Walcott’s The Odyssey: A Stage Version as case studies of how water operates as both symbol and narrative strategy. By reworking canonical Western texts, these authors mobilise seas and oceans to recover submerged histories, renegotiate postcolonial identities, and imagine ethical relations with the more-than-human world. Together, these texts demonstrate how writing with water enables new ways of reading literature, history, and planetary interconnectedness.

Short bio

Mattia Mantellato is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Enna “Kore” in Sicily. He holds a PhD in English Literature (Doctor Europaeus) from the Universities of Udine and Trieste and has published widely on World and Post-Decolonial Literatures, Blue Humanities, Derek Walcott, and intermedial and performance studies. He is the author of two monographs, Narrative Rewritings and Artistic Praxis in Derek Walcott’s Work (2022) and Tidalectic Visions of the Postcolonial Atlantic (2025), and the recipient of several academic awards and international research fellowships. Alongside his academic career, he is a professional ballet dancer and choreographer, trained at La Scala Ballet Academy, with worldwide performance experience.