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

Campania, Sicily...), working on the

“poetics,” it produced elitist results (Trilussa,

Di Giacomo, Buttitta...) which could be

somehow assimilated, through the levels

achieved, to those attained more or less

simultaneously by Italian poetry, albeit with

more narrowly defined themes.

In this sense, the role played by certain

exemplary lessons (from the more recent

Belli, Trilussa, Di Giacomo, Russo, to the

more distant Berneri, Basile, Cortese, Meli,

Tempio) seemed very significant; and not

only in the respective regions, but also in the

broad context of poetic dialectality, for the

grammatical canons it provided and the

guarantee of a thematic tradition. Along

with these, when interest turned

simultaneously to poetry in Italian, at times

particular insights were to be found, in a

more diffuse manner, in “small things” and