Sardinian literature

The literature of Sardinia is the literary production of Sardinian authors, as well as the literary production generally referring to Sardinia as argument, written in various languages.

Being the existence and understanding of direct statements of the proto-Sardinian (pre-punic and pre-Latin) language or languages hotly debated, the first written artifact from the island dates back to the Phoenicianc period with documents such as the Nora Stele or the trilingual inscription (Punic-Latin-Greek) from San Nicolò Gerrei. This last artifact simbolizes the passage of the island from a punic cultural and linguistic influence to the Roman one. Punics took control of Sardinia around the year 500 BC, and lost it in 238 BC after the First Punic War. After that the new Roman province of Sardinia et Corsica experimented an almost exclusive use of written and spoken Latin, for more than eight centuries, as a result of the linguistic Romanization of the entire island. After being briefly occupied by the Vandals in 456 approximately, it was taken again by the Romans in 534 A.D., more precisely the Romans from the East, the byzantins, which gradually introduced the medieval Greek in all levels of society; common people continued to speak a Latin dialect which evolved, after some centuries in the romance Sardinian medioeval language. In this period Latin still remained the language of the religious culture as Sardinian Church was strictly related to Rome, while Greek was the language of the political power, that of the very far but powerful Emperor of Costantinople. The new millennium brought a conquest attempt by Muslims, which failed due to the fleets of Pisa and Genua, but, in the same time it brought a new rapprochement to western Europe, as Byzantines were no more able to defend the farthest part of their “οικουμένη”ecumene.

Multilingualism, as we shall see, will always be a constant in the literary history of the island: Punic, Greek, Latin, Byzantine Greek, medieval Latin, Sardinian and vernacular Tuscan,Catalan, Spanish, Sardo-Corsican, Italian, and even French were the languages which Sardinian authors used for two millennia. Of particular importance for the history and anthropology of Sardinia in Roman times, is the text of the table of Esterzili: "The find is of exceptional importance for the inscription of 27 lines with capital letters: it shows the decree by the Proconsul of Sardinia L. Elvio Agrippa March 18 69 A.D. - during the reign of the Emperor Otho - to settle a border between the populations of Patulcenses Campani and Galillenses that have repeatedly violated the limits. The proconsul in particular ordered that the Galillenses had to leave the lands occupied by force and warned them off keeping to rebel. The text ends with the names of the members of the acting council and with the seven witnesses signatures. The scientific value of the finding is having sent along with the names of two of the populations living in Roman Sardinia, a summary of the long dispute occurred between the end of the Republic and early Imperial Age (since the end of the second century. BC to the first century AD).

...
Wikipedia