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

Giacomino Acerbo”).

Much richer and more varied is the

Twentieth-Century landscape. The century

opens with a small survey of Dialect

Documents, prepared by Gennaro Finamore

for the Rivista Abruzzese (Teramo, 1903); an

important survey not only because the first

of a series of antological surveys still to come

until the present, but also because the well-

known folklorist accompanies it with

prejudicial observations that will be often

discussed in the future, that is, that in “all

our dialect compositions in verse it is not the

poet, but the man of the people or the

populace who is speaking; and for this

reason one should not look to them for

delicacy of sentiments or high flights of

fancy.” And he suggests, chancing a hasty

comment, that the cause of the mediocrity of

results depends on the common conviction