2014 to be dedicated to Arberesh writer

TIRANA, March 11 – Albania’s Culture Ministry says it will announce 2014 as the year of Jeronim De Rada, the best known writer of Italian-Albanian (Arberesh) literature and the foremost figure of the Albanian nationalist movement in the 19th century in Italy.
Both the Albanian and Kosovo culture ministries will engage in preparing publications on De Rada by Arberesh authors and researchers and launch a literary competition to mark the 200th birth anniversary of the author.
De Rada (1814-1903) published the first edition of his best known Albanian-language poem, the ‘Songs of Milosao,’ under the Italian title Poesie albanesi del secolo XV in 1836. The volume is a long romantic ballad portraying the love of Milosao, a fictitious young nobleman in fifteenth-century Shkodra (Scutari), who has returned home from Thessalonica.
“Before Albania had become a political entity, it was already a poetic reality in the works of Girolamo De Rada. His vision of an independent Albania grew in the second half of the nineteenth century from a simple desire to a realistic political objective to which he was passionately committed,” says Robert Elsie, a specialist in Albanian studies.