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

(Don’t be conceited: / read and think, / that

even a peasant / can teach you something)

represent its explicit interpretive key, in

absolute consonance with Lombardo

Radice’s speech to the teachers of Florence.

The “culture” of the “illiterate” people,

rediscovered by the teacher, can accept and

assimilate in its unchanging mindset even

the novelties brought by time.

The overall sense of Cirese’s cultural

position in those years is clearly defined in

the premise to Rugiade, where the

vindication of the contribution of his

research on folksongs and dialect poetry to

the reconstruction of the cultural, and

consequently geographical and historical,

identity of Molise, (also to be remembered is

his attempt at dialect prose ─ Tempo d’allora:

figure, storie e proverbi [Time of long ago:

figures, tales and proverbs], 1939 ─ in the