Reading Achille Mizzi : a phenomenological hermeneutics of the Christian narrative

Abstract

The work of one Maltese poet, Achille Mizzi, provides ample opportunity for applying Hans Georg Gadamer’s view that interpretation loosens the traditional fixity, without yet losing the traditional effect, of the text. The greater part of Mizzi’s oeuvre is concerned with defamiliarizing sacred myth, and thus offers a poetic method unique in its hermeneutical opportunities for deciphering the inherited archetypal constitution of our present-day selves. This often involves poetic devices as the combined effect of evoked and significantly altered myths, comprising doctrinal beliefs and forms of behaviour pertaining to unconsciously retained archetypes. [excerpt]