Aesthetics, identity and literary theory : the Maltese post-independence experience

Abstract

The question ‘What is Art?’ is a treatise concerning the nature and purpose of art. Such a question is quite often thought to be fundamental to aesthetics. Aesthetics is concerned with analysing the very concept of art, what art is, the evaluations that relate to it and the links between art, morality and truth. Literary aesthetics is that branch of the theory of literature which is distinctively philosophical and focuses on those aspects of literary works in virtue of which they are works of art. Aesthetic writings impart philosophical reasons behind the creation of a work to the reader which help in a better understanding of the literary work. Such writings define the mechanisms of imagination, discuss what literature is and what it is not, explain the role and the definition of the poet and delve into the intention of the authors or examine the response of the reader in relation to the text itself. Aesthetic writings are about the nature and the value of beauty in the arts. Art has not always been what we think it is nowadays. An object regarded as art today may not have been perceived as such when it was first made, nor was the person who made it necessarily regarded as an artist. Both the notion of ‘art’ and the idea of the ‘artist’ are relatively modern terms. Many of the objects we identify as art today were made in times and places when people had no concept of ‘art’ as we understand the term. In my study I am presenting a theoretical overview of how definitions of the essence of art and, more specifically literary works, differed over time; focusing attention on the second part of the 20th Century. I will then compare such theories with Maltese aesthetic writings of the same period; namely writings by the authors of the sixties who experienced the transition that Independence brought about, such as Oliver Friggieri, Mario Azzopardi, Daniel Massa and Achille Mizzi. My study is divided into three different parts, containing two chapters each. I began my research by focusing on the sixties; years which have been crucial for the Maltese culture and identity. It was indeed a transitional period in which new ideas emerged and manifested themselves in many fields; namely: literature, art and music. I outlined the basic changes that occurred during that time, the new concepts that artists began to adopt, the new themes that writers wrote and singers sang about. I think that is fascinating to analyse how Maltese Independence was not merely a political issue. It was, above all, a cultural one. It was a wave of new ideologies that brought about novel doubts, different curiosities and European thinking.