Maltese Romantic poetry and the yearning for self-governance and independence

Abstract

Maltese Literature written in the Maltese language is quite a young literature. Apart from the 15 Century Cantilena and the 17 century Sonetto by Giovan Francesco Buonamico, one has to wait until practically the 19 century for Maltese writers to start writing in Maltese. Basically, until this time, from 1530 onwards, Maltese writers had written the bulk of their work mainly in the Italian of Tuscany, even though Arabic (three Maltese poets writing in the 12 century at the Palermo court of Roger II), Latin (Giacomo Bondin, with his Latin epigrams and Luca D’Armenia’s 1565, O Melita Infelix) and Sicilian (one poem in Marcello Attardo de Vagnoli’s 17 century Canzoniere; two poems in the 19 century newspaper Nafras u Colombo) had also been sporadically made use of by established Maltese writers (Cassola, 2000: 2-4; Cassola, 2011: 58).