Stefano De Franchi e il dialetto genovese rusticale

Abstract

The paper deals with the particular linguistic variety spoken by some servants in Stefano De Franchi’s comedies (1714‒1785). After briefly hinting at some fundamental aspects of his production (§1), we examine the text of his comedies (§2) and analyze the servants’ language. This variety presents numerous traits which do not belong to Genoese (§3), some others which will spread in the urban variety only between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (§4) and many others which had been expelled from it between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries (§5). Finally (§6), the linguistic analysis of Gerusalemme Liberata’s Genoese translation (1755) will allow us to order chronologically the linguistic relics of §5.