Koiné, ma non troppo. Apuntes acerca de la lengua de algunos autores presentes en el cansonero del conde de popoli

Abstract

Giovanni Cantelmo, sixth Count of Popoli, started to compose his Cansonero around 1468. This work has become the main and most reliable evidence of the transmission of written poetry in what has been called Neapolitan koine. The work hereby presented is a study about the main linguistic features found in four of the poets who are included in this collection: Coletta di Amendolea, Cola di Monforte, Francesco Galeota, and Pietro Jacopo de Jennaro. After comparing each of these authors’ modus scribendi in poems dealing with similar topics, one can conclude that Neapolitan koine is not homogeneous, in spite of what critics have said so far. This koine chooses its features based on a range that could be described as a “thematic diglossia”. In light of that, due to the authors’ awareness of this process, it cannot be said that this literary movement is but a failed attempt of copying the style found in educated poetry.