Ugo Foscolo

Chapter 1 offers a thematic biography of Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827), one of Italy’s canonical poets. It reconstructs the linguistic and literary landscape of Foscolo’s native Ionian Islands and follows the poet’s gradual Italianization as a man of letters and a political activist. By focusing on his celebrated work Le Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis, it explores the role of exile both as a powerful motif of Risorgimento literature and as a driving force in the poet’s own biography and image-making. Lastly, the chapter investigates Foscolo’s transnational patriotism between Venice, Napoleonic Italy, the British Ionian Islands, and revolutionary Greece.