Abstract

In the last years of his life Alessandro Manzoni devoted himself to the writing of a book originally intended as a comparison between the French Revolution and the Italian Risorgimento. This unaccomplished work is a narrative and at the same time a radically critical judgement of the events situated in the late spring and the summer of 1789 (in the perspective of the whole course of future revolutionary events). The article takes into account some harsh rejections of this Manzoni’s posthumous book and focuses on the aspects of its originality, keen insights and ever brilliant and ironical literary style.