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

in Lamis, QS ed., 1994. Tusiani is also

included in the anthology by P. Sorrenti, La

Puglia e i suoi poeti dialettali: Bari, De Tullio,

1962 (anastatic reprint by Forni, Sala

Bolognese, 1992).

The plurilinguistic character of Joseph

Tusiani’s literary activity, far from erasing or

diminishing the use of dialect, seems instead

to exalt the role it plays in the writer’s

complex psychodynamics. Formulating for

Tusiani the binary function of four

languages ─ dialect and Latin being

committed to the expression of archetypal

worlds, while Italian and English to the

expression of composed and rationalized

experiences ─, it is possible to assign to the

dialectal vehicle (specifically the dialect of

the Gargano town of San Marco in Lamis) a

marked connotation of appeal to memory