The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis

Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis) is an epistolary novel written by Ugo Foscolo between 1798 and 1802 and first published later that year. A second edition, with major changes, was published by Foscolo in Zurich (1816) and a third one in London (1817).

The model was Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). Another influence is Rousseau's Julie, or the New Heloise (1761). Foscolo's work was also inspired by the political events that occurred in Northern Italy during the Napoleonic period, when the Fall of the Republic of Venice and the subsequent Treaty of Campoformio forced Foscolo to go into exile from Venice to Milan. The autobiographic elements reflect into the novel.

Ortis is composed of letters written by Jacopo to his friend Lorenzo Alderani; the last chapter is the description of the young man's last hours and suicide written by Lorenzo.

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