https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/5739 Sun, 12 Apr 2026 07:47:39 GMT 2026-04-12T07:47:39Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/8724 Title: 'Our English visitors' : some British women in Malta during the nineteenth century Authors: Refalo, Michael Abstract: Recent historiography has challenged an exclusively male reading of empire. In Malta, however, the presence of British women has been generally limited to the philanthropic activities of the wives or widows of visiting dignitaries. While acknowledging the presence of these woman, the present writing concentrates upon the 'others', whether these were the middle class women born of British parents who engaged in a variety of activities, or the anonymous ones for whom the islands were a land of opportunity, or of despair. The elaboration of the subject is carried out in the awareness of the then-current realities which juxtaposed English, colonial mentalities against local, Italianate ones. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/8724 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/8723 Title: The early modem licensed ridotto : an attempt to 'domesticate gambling'? (1650-1798) Authors: Buttigieg, Noel Abstract: During the early modern period gambling assumes a greater importance in the everyday life of the Maltese urban dweller. Strict anti-gambling legislation promulgated by the Knights of St.John (1530-1798) was not enough to curb what was seen as a profligate practice. For the authorities gambling was associated with violence, usury, fornication, excessive spending, blasphemy, voluntary poverty, or any attempts to win the favours of fortune or divine assistance through magic. Nevertheless, the pervasive behaviour of the urban dweller supported by the exigencies of a maritime centre soon thwarted the Order s view on the extent of effective anti-gambling control. Gambling gradually developed from simple backroom activities into licensed public games rooms known as ridotti. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/8723 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/8722 Title: The Essential Achille Mizzi, selected, translated, and introduced by Peter Serracino Inglott : a case for performative translation Authors: Micallef, Bernard Abstract: Delivered on the occasion of the English publication of Achille Mizzi's essential poetry in Maltese, this paper discusses the issue of the translatability of literary works. One of its key arguments concerns the translated poem as an aesthetic orientation neither capriciously free of the original, nor yet restricted to a repeatable meaning. The paper argues that the literary translator, in this case Peter Serracino Inglott, must work at the associative and inferential level, careful not to replicate the identical devices of the original text in a new poetic context where they might be rendered ineffective, but equally careful to project the connotative reach and aesthetic potential inhering in the original work. One consequence of this creative engagement with the original text is the mutual growth of translator and translated work: the translator must submit to the artistically unfolding world of the original text, but also revives its progressive insight with intuitive contributions that maintain its connotative direction. The translator finds his ordinary self previously translated, as it were, by the poetic universe he inhabits, submitting his sensibility to the very archetypal flow and figurative trends that he now extends. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/8722 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/8699 Title: Maria Iliff u zewg ghanjiet qodma bil-Malti Authors: Cassar, Mario Abstract: Mrs Maria Iliff was an actress, singer, poet, and novelist who, while residing in Malta in 1818, published the book Poems, upon Several Subjects. This slim volume should interest scholars of Maltese literature as it includes what are probably the first two unpublished poems (possibly folk songs) in the vernacular ever to appear in an English-language book. Mrs Iliff also provides a free translation of these poems in English. The same poems are also found in a manuscript entitled 'Canzonete in lingua maltese', compiled some time later, in 1825, by Dr Giuseppe Zammit. This paper compares and contrasts the two versions from an orthographic and textual point ofview, and seeks to shed some light on the character of written Maltese during the early years of British rule in Malta. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/8699 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z