Dr Adrian Grima will be giving a public talk in Maltese entitled, “‘Minn kull xorta ta’ qziez.’ Dun Karm u l-konfini tal-identità fil-mument tal-metafora.” The talk will be followed by an open discussion. With the aid of visual material, Dr Grima will propose a multidisciplinary reading of Dun Karm’s rhetorically powerful and unusually angry poem, “Lil Malta. Tal-lum u ta’ Ghada,” focusing on the poet’s use of metaphor to denounce Malta, the fallen “Malta fior del mondo,” as a promiscuous woman morally and culturally defiled by “all manner of filth.”

The talk is a critical appraisal of one of Dun Karm’s most striking poems and his romantic notions of identity.

This event is being organised by the Fondazzjoni Karmen Mikallef Buhagar and the Department of Maltese at the University of Malta and will take place next Friday, the 9th of December, at Francis Ebejer Hall (LT2), at 7.00pm. The talk is open to academics, students and the general public. Entrance is free of charge.

Adrian Grima’s multidisciplinary reading of Dun Karm’s work will draw on such disparate resources as Fr. Paul P. Galea’s book about Il Kerk ta’d-Demoniu micxuf f’Malta published in 1912; the classic work of anthropologist Mary Douglas on the notions of Purity and Danger; canonical works and more recent psychoanalytical texts about virginity and chastity, like The Banquet of the Ten Virgins, or ConcerningChastity by St. Methodius from the third century; academic works on metaphor by Ricoeur, Cohen, Eco, Lakoff and Ning Yu; articles and a poem published in contemporary newspapers Il Cotra, Malta Taghna and Il Hmara; and leading Fascist intellectuals working on Malta in the 1930s like Luigi M. Ugolini and Francesco Ercole.

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