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

original and deforming expressionism, often

hyperbolic, of Sgruttendio da Scafati, or the

one somehow differently “normalizing” of

Giambattista Basile or Giulio Cesare

Cortese...). Dialects, that is, become flexible

again in the cultured use of poets who can

mediate their aristocratic artistic needs with

the more general ones of expressiveness (and

of communication as well, even if

privileged), bringing about a meeting

between “speakers” (often merely

hypothetical) and “non speakers,” in the

name of a recovered language aiming at the

absolute, the eternal: the classical, finally.

This language crosses the boundaries of

dialect anthropology inasmuch as it

presupposes, at any rate, a refined and

supernational culture. For it is precisely the

latter that has permitted an active use of it,

capable of rendering dialects all the more