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

that is, of almost 5 million people involved

in emigration; the technological revolution;

the political-cultural emancipation of the old

subaltern classes), that the relationship

between language and dialect, and therefore

the manner in which dialect literature is

produced, has been deeply affected. It has

been indeed the process of Italianization to

better define the functional reach of dialect,

so that even dialect poetry, and dialect

poetry from Apulia in particular, has vastly

extended its expressive range, aiming

increasingly at the recovery of its own

historical memory and the awareness of its

own cultural identity.

One can speak at this point of

“progressive dialect,” according to the

terminology preferred by Ernesto De

Martino, of a dialect matured historically

and ideologically, closer to the demands of