The fusion of Semitic and Latin cultures in the language and literature of Malta

Abstract

A history of Maltese culture may be said to reflect in various ways the history of the whole community. Since, much more than in the case of larger countries, Malta could never do without foreign contacts, necessarily causative of a complex process of influences, such a history, be it political, social or cultural, is bound to assume a comparative character. What are euphemistically called foreign contacts were nothing less than foreign occupations. The conditions which characterise and modify the process of, say, a political history of subordination, may boil down to be the real causes of analogous conditions in the cultural field. Conflicts of various natures did come to the fore throughout Maltese history. In the case of literary culture, the basic conflictuality seems to be linguistic and not necessarily cultural or psychologicaL The roots of the dualism to be discussed here are embedded in the soil of political experience: there were the foreign rulers and the natives, the ruled ones. Within the category of the ruled, social stratification manifested itself in linguistic diversity. The so-called uneducated class only knew Maltese, the native tongue, whereas the others could immediately distinguish between the language of culture, traditionally Italian, and the local dialect.