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

ABRUZZO

If the birth of dialect literature is to be

placed not beyond the Sixteenth century,

that is, the period in which the Florentine

and Tuscan vernacular in general imposes

itself as a literary language on the national

level, relegating all other regional

vernaculars to the rank of “dialects,” namely

secondary idioms and local tongues, one can

easily state that the first document of dialect

poetry from Abruzzi is a caudate sonnet,

written by the Tailor Mariano Moreiro

(L’Aquila,? ─ 1551) for the death of Serafino

Aquilano.

From the first part of the Seventeenth

Century is then a “Canzone in lingua rustica

cicolana” by Giovanni Argoli (1606 ─ 1660),

from Tagliacoz¬zo, author of Idilli and of a

long poem, Endimione, composed in