The numerous twentieth century essays concerning Melchiorre Cesarotti (l730-1808) have thoroughly demonstrated the prominent role that the Italian author played in the relationship between Italian and European cultures at the turn of the nineteenth century, but they have never been mindful of the assistance that he received from his circle, In fact, Cesarotti's personal work was only the first gear of a well-oiled literary machine sustained by a large group of male and female literary enthusiasts: the school of Cesarotti. The full reconstruction of Cesarotti's unpublished correspondence reveals that this school was not typical. Rather, it was a company that developed its own traditions and "liturgy" over many years, each pupil of which sharing his or her time and cultural activities with the teacher and other comrades in a spirit of brotherhood. The prideful professor-patriarch, who sincerely loved his pupils, dominated the group, or family, which ultimately became too concave to produce literature or poetry adapted to the looming, new century. This is the basis on which Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827) built his critique of the school. The Greco-Venetian poet made his debut in the school of Cesarotti, but soon conscious of its unbearable faults, limits, and constrictions, he left and finally founded a new school, based on a stronger awareness of the historical and civic mission of the man of literature.
