Il-Kavallieri ta' San Ġwann fir-rumanz storiku Malti

Abstract

This dissertation outlines the development of the Maltese historical novels and the way the Knights of St. John are depicted in them. In Malta, the first historical novels flourished during the Italian Risorgimento, when a number of Italian exiles, including writers, journalists and political rebels, sought refuge in our islands. Some of these novels, which focused on the development of an independent homeland, gave a historical account of the period when Malta was ruled by the Knights of St. John. In this dissertation, I will show how these writers invited the Maltese themselves to fight for their own political rights against the British colonial domination. Taking these novels as a model, the first Maltese writers developed their own historical novels, using first the Italian language and later on, their own native language - Maltese. The use of the language spoken by the majority of the Maltese, was surely the best way of expressing the emotion of a whole nation and of building a national identity. The main aim of this dissertation is to show how these literary works searched for an identification of the 'patria' and the creation of a national consciousness. By analysing the novels of the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, I will show how the Maltese novelists used the same structure of the Italian novels to transform the glories of the past into spectacular scenery. In some of the chapters, I explained how these novelists revitalised forgotten myths and past glories by setting a fictitious plot in a historical background. A study of several novels, particularly those set in the 1530 - 1789 period, serves to indicate the effects which these novels had on the Maltese people. In such novels, the idealised depiction of the remote historical experiences was transformed into a vision where both the past and the present were projected towards an immediate future - one in which Malta was visualised as a free country, run by the Maltese and not by foreigners.