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

gap in that period, with the exception of the

always fertile Naples, where with Luca

Postiglione, Ernesto Murolo, Rocco Galdieri,

Libero Bovio and, above all, Raffaele Viviani

literary activity in dialect does not seem to

experience any decline. The exception is,

therefore, Molise, as confirmation of that

“peculiarity” of its budding dialect tradition

we proposed as premise to this introductory

essay.

The other curve, which took place in a

completely different historical climate, is

fundamentally based on analogous

motivations: the resumption of studies on

popular traditions and of the debate on the

relationship between “national” and

“regional” cultures in the Sixties (cf. the

fundamental text by Carlo Dionisotti,

Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana,

1967), anticipated in exemplary fashion in