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

Pascoli and Di Giacomo, continues without

interruption astride the last two centuries,

even though it receives a few beneficial jolts

here and there, as in the case of Giuseppe De

Domenicis from the Salento (alias Captain

Black), who tackles satire and historical

themes. The fact is, as Pasolini notes, that

one should study how a certain minor

literature of the Nineteenth century (from

De Amicis to Stecchetti) could be so

successful in the provinces of the former

Neapolitan kingdom, where indeed a great

author like Verga had made the broadest

possible use of dialect, until then

compressed by the ruling sentimental-

nationalistic rhetoric, to give “reality” to his

works.

The misconception of dialect as sub-

language or language as reservoir of

expressionistic specimens to be used by late-