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

modest literary interest, according to

Pasolini in the aforementioned anthology.

Still able to interest us today, on the one

hand they well represent the spirit of the

people of Bari, which borders on

“irreverence and obscenity” (Dell’Aquila,

op.cit.) without sentimental mewling, and

on the other, that of the people of Lecce,

characterized instead by an elegant air with

popular overtones. Not much better fare

David Lopez and Antonio Nitti, who also

arrive late with respect to the expectations of

a nation unified with great difficulty.

“Consider — adds Pasolini ─ what intense,

imaginative poetry could have been

produced by an inspiration conscious of an

element then potentially vital to poetry in a

southern dialect, that is, an anti-unification

or even pro-Bourbon political stance. This

carried-over literature, positioned between