Verses and Visions

Thomas Freller’s many books and articles on people who have lived in or visited the Maltese Islands reach a peak in this new and massive scholarly study about the representation and perception of these islands in literary works that have appeared mainly in Western Europe since Classical Times down to the end of the 19th century.  The focus is on literary works – prose, poetry, drama – but Freller shows in detail how, for instance, works of journalism such as the many contemporary accounts of the 1565 Great Siege of Malta led to the writing of plays by Christopher Marlowe and by Philip Massinger with his co-authors John Fletcher and Nathan Fielding, while the considerable literature on the Order of St John in the 17th and 18th centuries produced the figure of the young and dissolute Knight of St John in a number of 18th century French novels. Starting with a chapter on Malta in the literature of the Classical Period and of the Middle Ages, Freller devotes chapters to Malta in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama; French literature of the Baroque and the Enlightenment; Spanish and Italian novels, drama and poetry; the German Classics, Romantics and Realists; Malta and the great British novelists of the 19th century; Malta and the great French novelists of the 19th century. Each chapter is equipped with an impressive array of end notes, and the extensive bibliography makes the work even more valuable to the scholar and the student.

CONTENTS

Introduction

A fragmentary beginning. Literary glimpses and historical evidence.  The references to Malta in the literature of the Classical Period and Middle Ages

‘Heroes and Scoundrels’. Malta in Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama

Splendour and Scepticism. The French Baroque and Enlightenment

‘Melita triumphans’. Malta in Spanish and Italian novels, drama and poetry

The German Classics, Romantics and Realists

Nostalgia, the bizarre and the sublime. Malta and the great British novelists of the19th century

Exoticism the picturesque and the lure of the Orient. Malta and the great French novelists of the 19th century

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index of Persons and Fictitious Personages

Index of Places

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