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

in Pascoli's georgic poems, and more

infrequently at other times even in a certain

Parini, in Leopardi, in Carducci, in

D'Annunzio (if not the classics!). That could

even be a way to reclaim dialect as an

instrument of poetry, were it not that what

prevailed in most cases were forms of

epigonic imitation (as generally happened

for Di Giacomo's melodic line) which, when

dealing with certain themes and their

modalities of expression, had very little to do

with lexicon. In general, the latter was

regulated by forms of linguistic empiricism

even when philological concerns were very

strong, so that the various poetic experiences

in dialect rarely achieved results of a level

comparable to those achieved by

contemporary Italian poetry. The persistent

realistic (and therefore mimetic) component

completed the picture, preventing the