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

of Molise, and in all of Italy (but for Molise,

intent upon the achievement of

administrative autonomy, the situation was

even more complex), in the years between

the period preceding W.W.I. and the advent

of Fascism.

In any case, in the twenty-year interval

of the Fascist regime, Cirese plays a leading

role in the context of Gentile’s school

reforms, and in full adherence to the

programs outlined and promoted by

Lombardo Radice, so that he is wholly taken

with the representation of his “extremely

rural” Molise, always with an “idyllic,”

gratified, very satisfied and satisfying vision

of the “strapaese” typology (Gente Buona)

[Good People], 1925 ─ an elementary school

primer; La ‘lettricità [The Electricity], 1926, a

poem in a good-naturedly ironic key.

But apart from the political cultural