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

[cf. The Acts of the Provincial Council of

May 1920 and the 1st Regional Molisan

Congress of May 20-22 1922; the periodical of

the epoch, especially L’Avvenire del Sannio

(1919-1922), the official organ of the Popular

Party of Molise].

As the real prospect of acquiring

autonomy for the province became

unfeasible in a strongly centralized Fascist

state, the idea of a Molisan “homeland” was

kept alive instead on the cultural level in the

framework of Gentile’s education reforms

(1923), which accepted historiographic

concepts (Benedetto Croce) and

anticentralizing linguistic philosophies (G. I.

Ascoli), and above all the “decentralizing”

pedagogical recommendations of G.

Lombardo Radice for the elementary

schools, which were to assume once again

the task of educating the “people.”