A genuine and conscious Italian nationalism began to manifest itself during the Napoleonic era, and Vincenzo Cuoco was the apostle of this first revival of national consciousness. All of his writings, focussed on the urgent need for a free and independent Italy, aim at the renewal of "public spirit," an indispensable step towards the achievement of the country's unification and freedom through its own energies. / The purpose of our thesis is thus twofold. On the one hand, we wish to emphasize Cuoco's constant preoccupation with the shaping of the future Italian nation, through a large-scale re-education of the public, in order to re-integrate the lower classes, the common people, and raise them to a reasonable degree of civil consciousness. On the other hand, we shall attempt to bring out the internal unity of Cuoco's writings, which are not the product of a random inspiration, but rather constitute an organic whole, a systematic program of moral and political reconstruction of the Italian nation.

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