https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/1046 2026-09-26T10:52:27Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149086 Title: Psyche at sea : outline for a memory in fragments Authors: Bugeja, Norbert Abstract: In this part-memoir, part-theory-essay, the author meditates on the delicate nexus between the tragic loss of his mother, and the manner in which this experience has permeated his poetic voice and understanding of the Mediterranean over the decades. The impulse to respond to her elsewheres, he comes to realise, is at once bound to the need to write his own Mediterranean decolonially, as well as to recognise it as a geography of poetically suggestive spaces. Taking his reader on a creative-critical journey from the beaches of his childhood to Sicily, Rome, and Delphi, across the ocean to Buenos Aires and then back to Malta’s megalithic structures, Bugeja embarks on a quest for a Mediterranean poetics that reaches into those other openings which address or affect us today as a voicing-unto-ourselves. The author reflects on insights raised by Massimo Cacciari, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, Barbara Cassin, Iain Chambers, George Seferis, Stephanos Stephanides, and others in order to elicit perspectives towards ‘poetic intuition’ (E. Glissant) as an indispensable means for re-visiting and re-writing the region today. To attest to the Mediterranean now would entail deciding towards which facets of its burgeoning palimpsest we should feel compelled to direct our answerability – as well as to sustain a heightened rapport with the quality, tenor, nuances and fissures within the sea’s voices clamouring our way. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/148608 Title: Rereading Martin Amis : character, reputation, morality Abstract: This dissertation begins with the observation that, although Martin Amis was once at the centre of British literary culture, he has remained underrepresented in recent academic criticism. In response, it reassesses his fiction by taking character as a central, though not exclusive, critical concern, considered alongside the questions of reputation and morality that shape both his writing and its reception. This approach is informed by two developments: the renewed attention prompted by Amis’s death in 2023, and a broader critical return to issues surrounding character (and characterisation) in contemporary literary studies. Taken together, they help motivate a reconsideration of Amis’s literary standing through close readings of selected novels from across his career. Accordingly, the first chapter examines how Amis constructs the postmodern self in The Rachel Papers (1973), Money (1984), and London Fields (1989), analysing how these novels engage with and complicate postmodern conventions. The reading then turns to Night Train (1997) and Yellow Dog (2003) to explore Amis’s treatment of meaning and moral seriousness, and how these novels begin to suggest a broader emotional range in his portrayal of character. At the same time, this shift accompanies a change in tone and style, as Amis responds to the critical reassessment of postmodernism and its limits. Finally, the third chapter focuses on The Zone of Interest (2014) and Inside Story (2020), where questions of memory, history, and ‘late style’ shape a deeper emotional investment in his characterisation. These core readings are complemented by reference to Amis’s short stories and nonfiction, which help contextualise the novels within the broader context of his writing. Bringing the study to a close, the conclusion offers a final general reflection on what is overlooked when certain writers or methods fall out of critical view, and attempts to reaffirm the case for renewed scholarly attention to Amis’s fiction. Description: M.A.(Melit.) 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/148607 Title: Kafka at work : refractions of the Kafkaesque across the second half of the twentieth century Abstract: This dissertation investigates the evolving influence and cultural significance of the Kafkaesque in the second half of the twentieth century, tracing its literary refractions across a diverse range of texts and discourse, with a particular focus on Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, J. M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, as it examines how the Kafkaesque persists and adapts across divergent geopolitical and narrative terrains. Beginning by acknowledging that the term has transcended its literary origins to become a widely recognised descriptor for situations marked by absurdity and bureaucratic oppression, this study first sets out to explore the roots of the Kafkaesque, arguing for a historically and theoretically grounded understanding of the term, and revisiting Kafka’s own texts to distil key thematic and formal elements. Through close reading of the three case studies, it will then demonstrate how Kafka’s legacy is not merely replicated but reconfigured, with Heller employing it for social commentary through satire set against a military backdrop; Coetzee engaging it as a vehicle for political critique under apartheid; and Ishiguro invoking it to map psychic fragmentation and existential drift. Subsequently, the study will delve more deeply into the possible reasons behind the pervasiveness of the Kafkaesque during this time. It engages with thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Theodor Adorno to contend that the enduring resonance of the Kafkaesque stems from its attuning to the ideological mechanisms of modernity and postmodernity. Ultimately, it concludes that the Kafkaesque remains of vital relevance to this very day, uniquely equipped to articulate the entanglements of power, selfhood, and systems that continue to define contemporary life. Description: M.A.(Melit.) 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/148606 Title: Breakdown or Breakthrough? : madness and selfhood in The Awakening, Tender is the Night, and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ Abstract: Female madness is a common trope in nineteenth and twentieth century literature. Readings of this trope vary in their interpretation of whether women going mad – thus being othered a second time – is empowering and subversive, or instead a state of ultimate defeat in which the madwoman cannot fight back against her oppressors. This dissertation will underline the ways in which the perception of madness is socially constructed to serve patriarchal thinking, and consequently to better understand madness as either power or powerlessness within the context of wider societal othering. The second chapter traces the connection between madness, selfhood, and motherhood, arguing that when madness is pushed upon the woman, she often loses a coherent sense of self, exacerbating madness, or else is not able to find her self until she explores those actions which society considers mad. The third chapter will bring these ideas into the context of readings of madness as either escape or defeat, in turn foregrounding how readings and theories surrounding these ideas come short in identifying with only one side of the argument. This analysis takes place in the context of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night (1934), and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ (1892). All three texts feature a central female character who experiences some form of madness either in the context of behaving in ways which are inappropriate because she is a woman, thus earning her the label of mad, or mental illness intensified by patriarchal definitions of womanhood, which often necessitate the aforementioned fragmentation of the self. This dissertation is informed by seminal texts on madness and the female hysteric, including the works of Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Elaine Showalter, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Marta Caminero-Santangelo, and Michel Foucault, among others, to show the consequences of female oppression and the way this manifests in the texts under discussion. Description: B.A. (Hons)(Melit.) 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z