Bicultural Identity and Intergenerational Memory in the Dramaturgy of Giuseppe Schirò Di Maggio

Contemporary Arbëresh drama provides a distinctive setting in which minority identity, collective memory and linguistic continuity are negotiated across generations. This article examines four plays by Giuseppe Schirò Di Maggio—Flutura çë do fluturonjë, Shumë vizita, Orëmira and Për tokën fisnike të Horës—through close thematic and linguistic reading. It focuses on the dramatic devices through which bicultural identity is constructed, particularly code switching, intergenerational dialogue, symbolic transformation, naming and the juxtaposition of different historical experiences of migration. The analysis distinguishes three recurring mechanisms of cultural resilience: linguistic maintenance, intergenerational transmission of memory and the symbolic reinterpretation of tradition. A fourth mechanism, documentation, emerges from the corpus itself as a response to the perceived fragility of oral transmission. At the same time, the plays do not present cultural continuity as an uncomplicated or collectively shared process. Across the four works, authority to define and transmit Arbëresh identity is concentrated largely in older, predominantly male characters, while younger and female characters are more often positioned as recipients, interlocutors or sceptical witnesses. The article therefore interprets Schirò Di Maggio’s dramaturgy not simply as an affirmation of cultural survival, but as a site in which the terms, limits and internal asymmetries of cultural continuity are themselves negotiated.