Dialects and national identity in Camilleri’s "Il birraio di Preston" and Collodi’s "Il viaggio per l’Italia di Giannettino"

Starting with an apparently accidental connection — Camilleri’s preface for Collodi’s crime novel I misteri di Firenze in the first volume of the Edizione nazionale of Carlo Collodi — this article analyses how Collodi and Camilleri, although one and a half centuries apart, both reflected on the relationship between the Italian national language and the local dialects in a discourse of national identity. The long-standing Questione della lingua controversy and its connection to regional identity assumed a central place in the complex linguistic dilemma that Italian society needed to face after the unification. This complicated relationship became a primary aspect of troubled Italian identity. Focusing on Camilleri’s Il birraio di Preston and Collodi’s Il viaggio per l’Italia di Giannettino, AndreaPagani argues that while in the former the Florentine dialect epitomises the problematic presence of the Italian State, in the latter Collodi uses dialect to emphasise the social and cultural importance of local communities.