In the relatively short history of Maltese literature and its critique, literary
influence was hardly ever understood as an opportunity for critics to explore the
relationship, at times unconscious and elusive, between Maltese texts and works written
overseas. This study renews the sporadic tradition employed by local critics like Ġuzè
Diacono who drew closer Il-Fidwa tal-Bdiewa by Ninu Cremona, a poetic play of high
historical value in the Maltese theatre context, with I Promessi Sposi by Alessandro
Manzoni. Diacono’s study can serve as an analytical model of how to recognise the
literary influence by a foreign literary work on a Maltese work. This study attempts to
modify Diacono’s metaphor of “debt,” with which he describes the phenomenon of
literary influence, to the more positive metaphor of “inheritance,” as this evokes a sense
of continuity, safeguarding and renewal; it promulgates the idea that the literary wealth is
not meant to be lost in the dust-covered books forgotten on shelves but has a dynamic
nature as it is inherited from one literary work to another. Writers will remain intrinsically
connected, like links in a chain, with what was written before them. Harold Bloom is quite
extremist in interpreting the notion of literary influence. He argues that anyone who came
after Shakespeare was influenced by him. Is this a misfortune or a blessing? Literary
influence, as it has no spatial or temporal limits and is not restricted to one artistic form,
is more of an advantage than a form of inevitable curse. It is, above all, a source of
inspiration. An artwork can inspire the creation of another artwork.
The main basic assumption is that when Ebejer wrote Menz he had already been exposed
to the popular narrative The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Menz was performed at the Manoel Theatre, more than a decade after the publication of the work
of Lewis. As Ebejer lived and studied in England and was a teacher of English, he was
surely au courant of the recent publications within English literature. Hence, it is highly
plausible that the Maltese playwright, has read the fictitious narrative set in Narnia. This
study is based on the fundamental similarities between these two literary works – a
correspondence that in my opinion is a clear manifestation of the literary influence that
stimulated Ebejer to produce an original piece of literature. It will show how for Ebejer,
the narrative of Lewis served only as an inspirational starting point.peer-reviewe
