Abstract
ABSTRACT As well as being one of the greatest comedians of the twentieth century, Antonio De Curtis (1898–1967), better known by the pseudonym of Totò (his comedic mask), was also a noteworthy dialectal poet. Intersecting the growing interest of scholarship in Neapolitan culture and following the recent new edition of De Curtis’s complete work of poems and songs, Il principe poeta: tutte le poesie e le liriche di Totò (2018), this study intends to draw scholarly attention to his neglected poetical work in dialect, exploring, in Pasolini’s words, the poetic innocence which is inextricably linked to his use of Neapolitan dialect. Unveiling the poet behind the mask and placing his opus in the wider context of Italian dialectal poetry, the article offers a close reading of ‘’O schiattamuorto’, ‘Bianchina’, and ‘Riflessione’, exploring the distinctive use of the theme of death.
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