La letteratura periodica

The essay provides a general outline of the journalistic production in the decade preceding the unification of Italy using the perspective of one paying more attention to its cultural content. The course of the studies has been divided into three parts following the changes of the political scene: the great desire to describe and report in the first five months of 1848; the period of the second restoration with the restrictions imposed by censorship in which culture, seen as a form of escapism, was the only available area of artistic expression; then the years 1857-1859 marked by a flourishing of political journalism stimulated by that group of intellectual youth famous as scapigliatura preunitaria'. A different approach, implying different survey research, has been adopted to each of the three parts: the presence of literary realities in the periodicals published until 1848; a review of some of the most relevant artistic paths inside the great production of 1850-1858; careful attention to the most important papers of the world of Scapigliatura.