Preface

Abstract

This issue of the Journal of Maltese Studies ranges from literary and linguistic aspects of Peter Caxaro鈥檚 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鈥檚 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.