From Dr P. Xuereb

Your report about the launch of Thomas Freller’s substantial scholarly work “Verses and Visions: the Maltese Islands in World Literature” uses the word “travelogue” in the title (TMIS, 18 May).

Freller’s work is not even remotely a travelogue. It is a very extensive study of the way the Maltese Islands have been portrayed in world literature from classical Greek and Roman times down to the 19th century.

There are chapters on both major and minor authors from Britain, Italy, France, Spain and Germany who have written at length or in a minor way about this country. To mention just a few of the great number of authors discussed, sometimes at length, by Freller, one can mention Homer, Christopher Marlowe, Lope de Vega, Frederick Schiller, Alphonse de Lamartine, Lord Byron, and Gabriele Rossetti. Important travel writers like Patrick Brydone and the Count de Borch certainly feature in the book, but the main focus is on dramatists, poets, novelists and belletrists.

Paul Xuereb

General Editor

Fondazzjoni

Patrimonju Malti