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

trajone [The Dragon], a mock-heroic poem

made of seven cantos plus an interlude-idyll

in rhymed sestinae. The work, that betrays a

remote echo of the poems by Pulci, Tassoni

and Ariosto, harks back to the popular fairy-

tale of the dragon that terrifies a peaceful

community of common people. The

uniqueness of this singular accomplishment

lies in its ironic reversal of popular tradition,

which has led some critics to discern in it a

soothing and placating message, as a

deliverance from the sorrows of war and

anachronistic ancestral fears.

To be sure, Borazio’s strenuous training

as a self-taught man has allowed the

Garganic, and Apulian, dialect to make some

gains in the expressive and folkloric spheres:

if by “folklore” one understands, with

Ernesto De Martino, a progressive culture,

conscious of its relationships in a field of