Romantic culture in Malta : a historical analysis

Abstract

This study attempts to answer two questions, which will be stated better in the introduction. The first looks to analyse the presence of romantic culture in Malta during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while the second sets out to study its link with the development of Maltese history already studied from the viewpoint of various compartments: political, cultural, social, educational and others. As stated already, I do not pretend to have exhausted the subject; rather, I provide an outline on the subject which can be further studied and exploited. Each section of the dissertation can be developed, but due to the limits stated by the guidelines of this degree, the project had to comply as much as possible with the expected word length. I have chosen to dissect this work into parts according to chronological order, although in every part a thematic approach is favoured. All quotations are translated into English, and where this was difficult, unclear or ambiguous, for instance in literary or proverbial translations, I have chosen to provide the reader with the original text in the footnotes. Texts and titles in old Maltese, which was written in a multitude of ways, are standardised even when reproducing the originals, since this project is not concerned with linguistic and technical analysis, which ultimately makes things less complicated and frustrating. The illustrations are not provided as decoration but as part of the evidence, when and where necessary.