Il lessico dell'opera teatrale di Francesco Cerlone (A-F)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the dialectal lexicon in the work of Neapolitan playwright Francesco Cerlone, starting from the perusal of the eight volumes published between 1825 and 1829, which collect most of his production. Cerlone does not rank among those authors whose work documents entire sectors of the lexical heritage of a language or dialect; writing off the cuff to meet the demands of actors, impresarios and audiences, Cerlone records spontaneous speech, offering the historian of language a record of the lexicon most recurrent in colloquial usage. Of many words Francesco Cerlone is the only witness, and not infrequently the lexicon is manipulated for the purpose of arousing the audience's hilarity through misrepresentations, deformations or allusions to other lexical domains and related semantic fields. The linguistic analysis and the reconstruction, albeit fragmentary, of the author's biographical events contribute to the rediscovery of an artistic event that deserves attention, since, thanks to the efforts of Cerlone, an admirer and epigone of Goldoni, popular Neapolitan theater has experienced a different theatricality, marked by a more rigorous work on the text and staging.