Hypercalipseos liber singularis

This booklet came out in two separate editions, both printed by the Orell e Füssli publishers of Zurich in 1816, but with a fake dateline of Pisa 1815. The first was a print of 92 copies destined for sale, while the second edition, dedicated to his English friend William Stuart Rose, was made up of only 12 copies for friends. A Clavis, which gave interpretations of the work and deciphered some of the more obscure passages, accompanied these two editions. The complete title was Didymi Clerici Prophetae Minimi Hypercalypseos Liber Singularis; Foscolo again used the pseudonym employed for the translation of Sterne for a work written in part in Milan in 1810 during the polemic that had set the writer against the Milanese literary figures, and it assumes the form of a thinly veiled attack on the poet's enemies. The title Hypercalypseos derives from the Greek for "hyper-concealment" and recalls, in the opposite way, Apocalisse (Apocalypse).

Foscolo hid behind the figure of Didimo, but he also presented himself as the “Guerriero” (warrior) to polemize intensely with his usual enemies (Urbano Lampredi, Dei Sepolcri critic Aimé Guillon, the printer Niccolò Bettoni and others),  who are presented as corrupt literary figures and journalists enslaved to power, leading members of a Napoleonic society dominated by corruption and falsehood. Despite the anachronism of denouncing a society that no longer existed, Foscolo went ahead with the publication, which had little circulation and impact, in part because of obscure allusions that were difficult to decipher despite the Clavis.