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

technical orientation of the dialect poets of

the first generation (it must be remembered

that D’Ovidio already in 1876 had published

La fonetica del dialetto di Campobasso); for

the vast historiographic activity of Alfonso

Perrella and Giambattista Masciotta (the

latter published in 1915 and 1915 the first

two volumes of the monumental work Il

Molise dalle origini ai nostri giorni). Ma-

sciotta was a convinced and strenuous

advocate of the administrative autonomy of

Molise (this commitment is attested in the

local press in the first quarter century, cf.

Ermanno Catalano, Uno storico molisano.

Giambattista Masciotta, Campobasso, 1983),

and to attain it (which only happened in

1963) it took the general mobilization of the

ruling classes, the intellectuals, and above all

the businessmen of the province, who took

the initiative away from the political parties