Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy (Italian Poetry in Translation Book 2)

ITALIAN LANGUAGE AND SOUTHERN

DIALECTS

Giacinto Spagnoletti

Dialect: which literature? The question

answers one of the many topics debated in

the numerous symposia held on the subject

in recent years. In general, the tendency was

not to speak only of a few dialects, but of our

whole patrimony conceived through the

centuries for the relationship between the

expression of the national language and that

of local speech. In this specific case, taking

into account, the interrogative, it would

seem that dialect is offered not one, but

several literary possibilities. In reality, one

cannot help but note that the plurilinguistic

line, so dear to Gianfranco Contini, has seen

no interruption from the Middle Ages to the

present day.