Homeland

The homeland is a theme that is present in all Foscolo's work, starting in the years of active political militancy between the Venetian Municipality and the Cisalpine Republic. The homeland has a double value in Ortis referring both to Venice and to Italy; it corresponds to a territory inhabited by a people that have a common history, the same traditions and the same language. The homeland is a sacred value for Jacopo, assimilated to other intense yet illusory passions such as beauty, art and love that enable man to overcome momentarily the negative nature of reality.

Patriotic inspiration is at the origin of many political writings of this period in which the "religion" of the homeland is combined with an analysis of the problems of the day and the identification of possible solutions; the concept of homeland, which is conferred a sacred value, therefore appears to be a concrete entity founded in a cultural identity of traditions, civilization and shared history.

In the years of political disillusionment the theme of the homeland assumes a more mythical value; in the sonnet Né più mai toccherò le sacre sponde the homeland does not just correspond to the territory of the island of Zante, it also assumes an idealistic meaning in reference to the Greek civilization populated by divinities and allegorical figures such as Homer, the symbol of poetry, and Ulysses, the emblem of a condition of rootlessness shared by the poet himself.

The theme of the homeland-Italy is central in Dei Sepolcri, where memory assumes a value at the foundation of national identity: peoples acquire civilization and cultivate a sense of belonging that is fundamental for the construction of a patriotic consciousness via the values transmitted by sepulchres and by immortalizing poetry.