https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/40264 2026-04-12T19:23:48Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/38465 Title: The University library 1838-42 Abstract: The reform of University studies contemplated in the Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Affairs of Malta, which was published in 1838, included arrangements for the provision of a University Library accessible to the public and housed outside the University building. Education in all its stages was under the control of the University. In those days and the Commissioners hit upon the idea of incorporating the Government Library in Valletta with the educational establishments making up the University of Malta. This idea was not quite new, for Napoleon's Order of the 18th June 1798 had likewise provided for the attachment of the Government Library to the Ecole Centrale that was to replace the University. However, Napoleon's decree had never been put into practice, and the Commissioners' recommendation in 1838 gave rise to an interesting experiment in library administration whose failure was due more to weakness in executing the educational reforms contemplated in other fields than to any defect inherent in the conception of the idea itself. 1959-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/38460 Title: La poesia Italiana d'Oggi Abstract: Le tre piu importanti scuole letterarie che fiodrono in questa prima meta del Novecento - la scuola 'crepuscolare, la scuola futurista e la scuola ermetica - durarono quasi uno stesso periodo di tempo, circa vent' anni: tutte e tre suscitarono grandi polemiche e diedero qualche poeta di pregio, ma tutte e tre sono ora per sempre tramontate, e rinchiuse nel casellario o nel sepolcreto della storia, coi loro meriti e coi loro demeriti, col loro bene e col loro male, con le loro vittorie e con le loro sconfitte. E senza dubblo nessuno pensera. mai a risuscitarle. Quale e dun que la poesi"a d' oggi? E quale sara la poesia nuova, la poesia di domani? 1959-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/38459 Title: Calpurniana Abstract: The edition of the Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus (along with the Laus Pisonis and the Laus Caesaris) published in 1954 by M. Raoul Verdiere (Collection Latomus, vol. xix) represents the latest contribution to Calpurnian studies, but it has not, in many respects, assisted the interpretation of this author, for the editor, dazzled by some of M. Leon Herrmann's more subtle but yet improbable hypotheses, has loaded his introductory material and notes with wild conjectures and eccentric opinions, thus dismaying and dissatisfying the reader. Of previous editions those of J. C. Wernsdorf (Poetae Latini Mmores, vol II, Altenburg, 1780) and of CH. Keene (London, 1887) are the most useful. Below are discussed several points which still seem to require exegesis or deserve reconsideration. 1959-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/38458 Title: Poetry and inspiration Abstract: Before I discuss tile nature of poetry and the motive force behind it which we call 'inspiration', I beg you to enter with me the Poet's workshop where we can have a good look at his tools, which, when employed by him effectively in the odd moments of inspiration, create beauty of sound and feeling out of a fluid combination of verbal measures. The most important material on which the poet employs his sharpened tools is language, his own language that provides thousands of single words and word-combinations out of which he builds a significant poem for those that wish to escape from the drabness of daily life or enjoy vicariously thoughts and ideas that flashed through his mind but which they could not, and perhaps would not, express in appropriate language. Description: Lecture delivered in the British Institute of Valletta in 1974 1959-01-01T00:00:00Z