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

historian Giacomo Racioppi who collects,

starting in 1948, the songs of Moliterno,

Saponara, Spinoso and Latronico, which

would later become part of the collection

edited by Casetti and Imbriani (Casetti-

Imbriani, 1871).

In the Positivistic Age there was a keener

interest in the recording of dialect, resulting

in the publication of the collections in the

dialect of Matera edited by Francesco Festa

(1872 and 1883) and by Molinaro del Chiaro

(1882) and the one in the dialect of Potenza

by the poet Pietro La Guardia.

In 1932 there is the isolated case of the

drama in the dialect of Senise: A mugghiera

ru miricane [The American’s Wife], Naples,

Unione, by Paolo De Grazia. Homologous to

dialect, to its syntactical constructions and

symbolic density, is the entire poetic and

narrative form of Rocco Scotellaro from