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

spheres. De Donno has brought his classical

and secular background to this study of

dialect, characterized by a resentful and

polemical humanism. It is not by chance that

he contributed to the review La Rassegna

Pugliese and other cultural publications, and

added to his fertile creative vein the study of

the folk culture of his territory.

De Donno’s work seems to aim at

summarizing and confirming what is meant

today by dialect poetry as an alternative

code to writing in Italian. In the first place,

De Donno has generally preferred the brief

and refined measure of the sonnet,

demonstrating that even the apparently

humblest dialect has a no less wide range of

rhythms and accents. The richness of the

technical solution is paralleled by the

endless variety of themes: whether it is the

polemical treatment of civil and social issues