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

plebeian obscenities, without that capacity

for sublimation, contemplation and protest

that elsewhere even humble and wretched

societies, in possession of a strong dialect,

were able to express” (M. Dell’Aquila,

Parnaso di Puglia nel ‘900, Bari, Adda, 1983,

pp. 305-306). It must be pointed out,

however, that this is not the case in the

Salento (southern Apulia), where the

presence of a vigorous local culture has

promoted a rather different tradition, which

we will examine further on.

Since the texts produced between the

Sixteenth and Eighteenth centuries are

classifiable only as being generically

Apulian, the region’s dialect literature

begins just before the middle of the

Nineteenth Century with Francesco Saverio

Abbrescia from Bari and Francescantonio

D’Amelio, that is to say, two names of