Menz f'Narnia : (lil hinn mil) l-ansjeta tal-influwenza letterarja fil-qari mill-gdid tad-dramm 'socjali-simboliku' ta' Francis Ebejer

Abstract

In the relatively short history of Maltese literature and its critique, literary influence was hardly ever understood as an opportunity for critics to explore the relationship, at times unconscious and elusive, between Maltese texts and works written overseas. This study renews the sporadic tradition employed by local critics like Ġuzè Diacono who drew closer Il-Fidwa tal-Bdiewa by Ninu Cremona, a poetic play of high historical value in the Maltese theatre context, with I Promessi Sposi by Alessandro Manzoni. Diacono’s study can serve as an analytical model of how to recognise the literary influence by a foreign literary work on a Maltese work. This study attempts to modify Diacono’s metaphor of “debt,” with which he describes the phenomenon of literary influence, to the more positive metaphor of “inheritance,” as this evokes a sense of continuity, safeguarding and renewal; it promulgates the idea that the literary wealth is not meant to be lost in the dust-covered books forgotten on shelves but has a dynamic nature as it is inherited from one literary work to another. Writers will remain intrinsically connected, like links in a chain, with what was written before them. Harold Bloom is quite extremist in interpreting the notion of literary influence. He argues that anyone who came after Shakespeare was influenced by him. Is this a misfortune or a blessing? Literary influence, as it has no spatial or temporal limits and is not restricted to one artistic form, is more of an advantage than a form of inevitable curse. It is, above all, a source of inspiration. An artwork can inspire the creation of another artwork. The main basic assumption is that when Ebejer wrote Menz he had already been exposed to the popular narrative The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Menz was performed at the Manoel Theatre, more than a decade after the publication of the work of Lewis. As Ebejer lived and studied in England and was a teacher of English, he was surely au courant of the recent publications within English literature. Hence, it is highly plausible that the Maltese playwright, has read the fictitious narrative set in Narnia. This study is based on the fundamental similarities between these two literary works – a correspondence that in my opinion is a clear manifestation of the literary influence that stimulated Ebejer to produce an original piece of literature. It will show how for Ebejer, the narrative of Lewis served only as an inspirational starting point.