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

other hand, as it is absurd to conceive

dialects as derivation, degradation or

corruption of literary language, it is just as

absurd to conceive literary language as the

sum or result of dialects, through various

and more or less explicit refinements, as

literary language, as is common knowledge,

is always a dialect elevated to national

dignity and unitary function through

complex historical reasons.”

Zanzotto, Pasolini, Zanotto, Marè, Pierro

have carried out an intense activity in

Italian, and when they came to dialect it was

not because their language had become

corrupted or blemished or degraded, but

because an inner need pushed them into the

tangles of those phonemes, without

hesitation, because “dialect literatures have a

range of expressive possibilities as extensive

as that of national literatures, and like the