Journal of Maltese Studies No. 28

Journal of Maltese Studies

Essays on the Cantilena

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Journal of Maltese Studies

Essays on the Cantilena

ISSUE EDITOR

BERNARD MICALLEF

Department of Maltese University of Malta in collaboration with

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Published by the Department of Maltese Faculty of Arts, University of Malta in collaboration with Midsea Books Ltd Carmelites Street, Sta Venera, Malta www.midseabooks.com

Editorial Board Chairman: Bernard Micallef Members: Arnold Cassola George Farrugia Olvin Vella All enquiries should be addressed to: The Editorial Board, Department of Maltese Faculty of Arts, University of Malta, Msida, MALTA First published 2014 Editorial Copyright Š Midsea Books, 2014 Literary Copyright Š the Authors, 2014 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the previous written permission of the authors and/or rightful owners.

Produced by Midsea Books Ltd. Printed at Gutenberg Press Ltd, Malta

ISBN: 978-99932-7-517-6

CONTENTS

Preface....................................................................................................... vii List of abbreviations.................................................................................ix The Cantilena as a Reading Experience Bernard Micallef..................................................................................... 1 The Notary in Maltese Late Medieval Society Stanley Fiorini...................................................................................... 29 Again on Peter Caxaro’s Cantilena: Some Remarks from the Viewpoint of Wider Western Arabic Dialectology Federico Corriente & à ngeles Vicente................................................. 75 Codicological Analysis and Conservation Treatment of the Cantilena Manuscript Theresa Zammit Lupi........................................................................... 91

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PREFACE

T

his issue of the Journal of Maltese Studies ranges from literary and linguistic aspects of Peter Caxaro’s Cantilena to the notarial milieu and the manuscript culture that provided the poem with favourable conditions for its transcription and preservation. While literary devices analysed in the first chapter stress the importance of actualizing the Cantilena as an artistic experience, the notarial milieu broadly depicted in the second chapter provides the social fabric in which the poem was originally transcribed. The third chapter resumes the focus on poetic diction, yet locates it within the wider field of western Arabic dialectology, revealing nuances of poetic meaning through this comparative approach. The last chapter’s codicological field once again assumes an extraliterary standpoint, from which the reader gains a rare glimpse of the writing material, the binding process, and other physical features of the Cantilena manuscript.

This volume’s academic contributions give scope for a healthy intersection between literary and extraliterary concerns relevant to the oldest extant poem in Maltese. The first chapter’s analysis of the poem’s allegorical image of a collapsed building, for instance, bears an evident relationship with the notarial practice of dealing in landed property, a well documented concern of notaries amply discussed in the second chapter. And conversely, the second chapter’s depiction of the varying fortunes of Maltese notaries in the

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fifteenth and sixteenth centuries highlights the Cantilena’s ultimate focus on “vintura,” the poem’s rhetorically enhanced subject of changing fortunes. While poetic devices transform historical fact into literary artefact, a lived history continues to provide the cultural and social origins of literary motifs.

The necessary correlation between a literary text and a wider historical context can also function as the working principle of a single study. The third chapter of this volume, for instance, draws on the more comprehensive repertoire of Andalusian and Maghrebian dialects only to better expound linguistic features and interpretive difficulties within the text. On the other hand, the codicological interest of the last study reminds us that a written work, more so a manuscript, could only subsist in the tangible reality of procuring parchment, paper, thread, and ink, materials that might easily be ignored, but that formed the broader sphere of consumable supplies upon which manuscripts constantly depended.

For decades now, the Cantilena has inspired an unending exchange of critical, historical, linguistic and other scholarly views. This issue of the Journal of Maltese Studies merely recognizes and extends this fruitful correspondence between learned Cantilena studies, bringing the research priorities of their respective fields into mutual proximity. Through this volume, the Department of Maltese continues to uphold and encourage the ongoing interdisciplinary approach to our language and its literature.

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ACM Archives of the Cathedral, Malta AD Additional Documents AO Acta Originalia ASM Archivio Storico di Malta ASP Archivio di Stato, Palermo CEM Curia Episcopalis Melitae DSMH Documentary Sources of Maltese History Lib. Library MCM Museum of the Cathedral Mdina, Malta Misc. Miscellanea NAV Notarial Archives, Valletta NLM National Library, Malta Prot.

Protonotaro del Regno RC Real Cancelleria Univ. UniversitĂ

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