Un patrimonio da recuperare: la “Campania dei contadini” un secolo dopo

Abstract

The contribution illustrates in detail an exemplification of the ethnolinguistic data collected in various locations in Campania in the 1920s by Gerhard Rohlfs and Paul Scheuermeier, investigators for the AIS (Linguistic and Ethnographic Atlas of Italy and Southern Switzerland), two personalities who are not only of great scientific relevance but also capable of approaching the Italian working classes, their language and their culture with humility and without any kind of prejudice. The complete publication of these extraordinary materials (minutes of dialect enquiries, photographs, drawings, detailed descriptions of objects, tools, and agricultural practices) will be included in the volume La Campania dei contadini (Peasants in Campania), and – like other volumes of a similar nature published from 1995 to the present day – will make it possible both to reconstruct the linguistic and cultural dynamics that have affected the region in the last century as well as offering a valid example, in terms of method and transcription, for the numerous initiatives to safeguard the local linguistic and ethno-anthropological heritage that have flourished and are still flourishing, even at school level, in every place of Campania.