Post-independence Maltese poetry - an overview

Abstract

To a large extent, the history of Maltese post-independence poetry is also the history of the poet's conversion from a patriotic to a linguistic, or purely artistic, hero. This runs parallel to a shift in the concept of independence: instead of the supposed conservative virtues of romantic self-perpetuation, independence now comes to connote an increasingly versatile poetry, assimilative of alien cultures through its enhancement of associative and reformulatory techniques. After Malta's political independence of 1964, Maltese literature is no longer ideologically guided by the romantic ideal of national self-sufficiency so often pitted against foreign rule. For one thing, there no longer existed a foreign power to blame for unrealized national hopes and ideals. [excerpt]