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According to Top-Engineering-Schools, these novels and plays, in which history was represented or was expected to be represented in the specific reality of its moments, corresponded to the same tendency which had led to the spirits to a conception of history which, putting in honor the powerful researches of the great eighteenth-century scholars and continuing them, drew from it a representation of the past (of the Middle Ages with particular predilection) well identified in concreteness of facts, institutes and customs, and interpreted it in function of a development of ideas and social forms generating the present and the future. Spirit of reaction to eighteenth-century stories is in the wonderful  historical essay on the revolution in Naples by Vincenzo Cuoco, all fed with Vichian juices; in the stories of Carlo Botta, frigid of death humanistic forms, and in  the History of the kingdom of Naples  by Pietro Colletta, which the fervor of political passion and the sincerity of inspiration save from the danger of classicistic artifice. But starting from Manzoni, author of the solid  Discourse on some points of Longobardic history in Italy , the new school of historiography that from the past sought to draw suffrage of authority and hope for its Catholic-liberal ideality. To this school belong Carlo Troya, Cesare Balbo, author of a  summary of the history of Italy, distinguished by doctrine and thought, Gino Capponi, Luigi Tosti, noble figures of historians and patriots, Niccolò Tommaseo, whose history books are spoiled by serious uncertainties of judgment and a bitter passion, and Cesare Cantù, tireless polygraph, historian of scarce originality and incapable of serene judgments. Another is the political inspiration of other historians, such as Giambattista Niccolini, a weak researcher of stories in preparation for his tragedies, Atto Vannucci, Antonio Ranieri and some others, who hoped for a solution of the national problem independent of the authority of the papacy and who in general brought to their treatment a scholarly preparation far inferior to that of the neo-Guelph historians.

Inspired by a political thought, and at the same time severely curious about the philologically ascertained truth, is the  History of the Sicilian Vespers by Michele Amari, a great orientalist, whose work marks the transition from the history of thought nourished by investigations and documentary material to the so-called scientific history, not inspired by political sentiments. Of this there had been valuable attempts and essays already in the first half of the century. XIX by Carlo Cattaneo; by Luigi Cibrario, by Ercole Ricotti, etc .; but scientific history was decisively prevailing and increasingly narrowing itself to pure erudition and philology in the first thirty years of the kingdom, when with successful archive research and some with a broad vision of the facts they attempted to solve historical problems or edited the critique of the sources Pasquale Villari , Giuseppe De Leva, Bartolomeo Capasso, Isidoro Del Lungo, and, younger, Carlo Cipolla, Amedeo Crivellucci, Ettore Pais with many others,

Similarly, literary and artistic history passed from the purely erudite treatises of the century. XVIII to wisely investigate the moral, religious and political life of the Italian people in literary and artistic expressions, making remarkable and sometimes distinguished proofs of himself in the critical pages of Foscolo, Mazzini, Gioberti, Tommaseo, Carlo Tenca, rising from  History of fine letters in Italy  by P. Emiliani Giudici to  the Italian literature lessons by  L. Settembrini, from  the History of Sculpture  by L. Cicognara to the  Aesthetic History – Criticism of the Arts of Drawing  by P. Selvatico, and culminating in  the History of Italian literature by F. De Sanctis, who in the great literary works, felt and magnificently interpreted as privileged forms of individuality, that is, as forms of art, saw the development of Italian historical life reflected.

Nourished in large part of the scholarly material that had prepared the great researchers of the century. XVIII, this school, also born from the historical fervor established by romanticism, had fulfilled its office with De Sanctis, and it seemed necessary that other investigations, gathering another mass of documents, would raise other historical problems in which and for which new truths surpassed those already achieved. Thus arose also for literary and artistic history, around 1860, a school entirely intended to review the first news and judicial sources, to discover new facts in the unexplored papers of archives and libraries, to restore the texts to their genuine appearance, to insert the gaze into the fantastic life of the middle age, to study the language and dialects with the comparative methods established beyond the Alps, and to do all this with rigor of method both in research and in the exhibition form. Initiators and masters were Adolfo Bartoli, Giosue Larducci, Alessandro D’Ancona, Domenico Lomparetti, Giovanni Flechia, Graziadio Ascoli in the various domains of the investigation, who for two active and fruitful generations had continuators Pio Rajna, Francesco D’Ovidio, Ernesto Monaci, Girolamo Vitelli, Remigio Sabbadini, Francesco Toiraca, Rodolfo Renier, Arturo Graf, Francesco Novati, Cesare de Lollis, Ernesto Giacomo Parodi, Carlo Salvioni with a whole host of other talented scholars.

Returning after this interlude of cultural history (for other information see philology) to creative ambitions and sparse creative spirits, it is necessary to mention the forms and attitudes that prevailed in Italian literature down to the century due to the action of romanticism. XIX. Not always aware, but certainly one of the tastiest, fruit of Italian romanticism, which placed the popularity of literature among its doctrinal canons, was the reinforcement that had everywhere the use of dialects as forms of expression of particular poetic worlds. Still eighteenth-century and Arcadian is Giovanni Meli, delightful in the harmonies of his easy rhythms and in the softness of his beautiful Sicilian dialect, who later happily expressed meanings between mysticism and good humanity in the poems of Alessio Di Giovanni. In Venice, the vernacular poetry of a certain rococo grace by Goldoni, Francesco Gritti, Antonio Lamberti, declares to the often scurrilous carelessness of Pietro Buratti and Camillo Nalin and then becomes entangled in the exquisite Venetian style and the elegant wit of Riccardo Selvatico. Later Verona gives Italy the lyrics of Berto Barbarani, open to a sense of broad humanity and to the poetry of the picturesque. Carlo Porta, an unsurpassed master in creating figures and scenes of life and in bending the Ambrosian dialect to the most varied expressions, of the comic and the pathetic, of the satirical and the dramatic, joins the old tradition of the Milanese muse to dominate it. In Piedmont Angelo Brofferio bites with the wit, often poisonous, of his dialect songs, defects of the time and political attitudes hateful to him. Wonderful descriptor of the customs, feelings, superstitions of the people of Rome, stands Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, to whom Cesare Pascarella is connected in his first experiments, but he soon moves away from him to reach a singular depth in the representation, even in the fine wit of the his sonnets, of the most serious and most tragic aspects of life; and, younger, Carlo Alberto Salustri (Trilussa) deals with satirical and narrative motifs of a popular character. The Pisan vernacular rises to the dignity of art in the sonnets of Renato Fucini, a pleasant narrator and exquisite descriptor even in Italian prose of anecdotes and costumes. In Chieti Abruzzo Cesare De Titta entrusts the heartfelt tenderness of his vein suffused with popular naivety to the fading sonorities of his dialect. And in Naples vernacular poetry, lyrical and dramatic.