In 1816 a violent literary quarrel engulfed Bourbon Restoration Italy. On one side the Romantics wanted an opening up of Italian culture towards Europe, and on the other the Classicists favoured an inward-looking Italy, based on its Greco-Roman roots. Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837), a young poet and philosopher, wrote a Discourse of an Italian on Romantic Poetry in 1818, aiming to contribute to the debate from a new perspective; it was finally published in 1906. This study provides the first complete English translation of the Discourse by Gabrielle Sims and Fabio A Camilletti. It is placed in context and its potential impact on contemporary Restoration Italy is assessed. Camilletti argues that the Classicist/Romanticist clash can be seen as the aftermath of the political, social and cultural trauma caused by the Napoleonic Wars.

"‘This is a book that opens radically new perspectives on Italian Romanticism, where the fractures that will resonate through the conflicting cultures of modern Italy first begin to take shape. With at its heart the most original contribution to the Romantic debate in Italy, Giacomo Leopardi's Discourse of an Italian on Romantic Poetry, Camilletti's study provides both a new assessment of Leopardi's writing in its historical context and a nuanced account of the cultural trauma that characterized the early years of the Restoration, between 1815 and 1827.’"