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

emblematic meanings. All this within a

context which takes for granted the

progressive impoverishment, through its

erosion and lowering, of the standard

language (it too, after all, the product of an

age-old evolution of a recognizable and

easily definable dialect^5 against which other

dialects represented not the regressive and

deviant variation, but only an alternative

which, if it has not known certain

“normalizing” paths, does not deserve,

almost by definition, the indifference or self-

serving ostracism with which the “different”

has always been exorcised. On the contrary,

it imposes a gnoseological and analytical

openness).

It is not a question of giving in to a

demonic temptation, maybe aimed at

endorsing “maternal” tongues over the

“paternal” one, but rather of feeling the