What’s in a footprint? A question of island magic

Abstract

This paper first looks at small islands from a literary point of view, using episodes of shipwreck from works such as Homer’s The Odyssey, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and Tennyson’s Lotos-Eaters, as a starting-point. The footprint in the sand that Crusoe is perplexed by becomes the point of reference for the main argument, whereby the paper looks how this footprint, which cannot be either explained nor negotiated, symbolically stands for those few geniuses that the island of Gozo has produced. An overview on the work of men of letters such as Ninu Cremona, Guzé Aquilina, poets such as Ġorġ Pisani and Mary Meilak, and musicians Mgr Gużeppi Farrugia u Joseph Vella is then presented, concluding on how these magical footprints in the sand are what makes the island of Gozo such a wonderful place with a rich legacy.