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

its provincial ghettos in order to place it in

open confrontation with other idioms, from

those belonging to sub-regional cultures to

those without communication boundaries.

Apulian dialects have thus become

alternative codes of an open linguistic

system, abandoning the subaltern function

as a consequence of the unification required

by Bembo’s sixteenth-century standard. In

such a perspective, they have emerged as

vehicles of recognition in an universe of

pervasive standardization that is taking

place with the spread of English and the

diffusion of mass media: with its lexical and

semantic richness, dialect has reclaimed a

communal space, made of people, places,

recognizable relationships.

The journey, nevertheless, has been long

and difficult. Apulia is a heterogenous

region, a product of the grafting of various