Abstract

The recent publication of Gianfranco Contini’s critical pages on Albino Pierro and the correspondence exchanged between the two of them for nearly twenty years solicit a few considerations on the maieutic role played by the critic in the evolution of Pierro’s dialect poetry. This article also examines how Contini’s studies attracted linguists and philologists to Pierro’s works, which thus built up a special niche readership in the context of twentieth-century Italian poetry.