The other Italy : the literary canon in dialect / Hermann W. Haller.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Italy possesses two literary canons, one in the Tuscan language and the other made up of the various dialects of its many regions. This book presents for the first time an overview of the principal authors and texts of Italy's literary canon in dialect.

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CHOICE Review

Italy continues to be a land of multiple languages--the official vernacular and the highly diverse dialects. Regrettably, the writing produced in the many regional tongues from the Middle Ages to now has received limited critical attention. Possibly the US's leading expert on Italian dialect literature, Haller (Queen's College, CUNY) does much to remedy this lack with this well-documented, informative companion volume to his prize-winning The Hidden Italy: A Bilingual Edition of Italian Dialect Poetry (1986). In a brief but solid introduction, Haller explores the historical and linguistic aspects of regional literature. He then divides the volume into two parts. The first studies the production of dialect literature by genre (poetry, theater, narrative) and as a philological instrument. The second part, by far the longer, is concerned with local canons; for the most part its chapters are dedicated to separate linguistic and geographic areas following Italy's political division into regions. Each of these chapters offers a history of dialect literature from that area, a handful of examples, and a list of writers and their works, followed by an extensive bibliography of specialized secondary sources. A formidable resource for anyone curious about Italy's diverse literary traditions. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. F. A. Bassanese; University of Massachusetts at Boston