Vincenzo Cuoco

Vincenzo Cuoco (October 1, 1770 – December 14, 1823) was an Italian writer. He is mainly remembered for his Saggio Storico sulla Rivoluzione Napoletana del 1799 ("Historical Essay on the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799").

Vincenzo Cuoco was born into a middle class family in the town of Civitacampomarano, near Campobasso in the Molise region of central Italy. His father was Michelangelo Cuoco, a lawyer and economist, while his mother was Colomba de Marinis. He studied in his native town under Francesco Maria Pepe, then moved to Naples in 1787 to study jurisprudence and become a lawyer, but instead found himself attracted to economics, philosophy, history, and politics. In Naples he had the opportunity to meet some of the prominent intellectuals of Southern Italy, including Giuseppe Maria Galanti, who in a letter to Vincenzo's father described the young man as capace, di molta abilità e di molto talento ("able, of great skill and great talent"), although trascurato ("careless") and indolente ("lazy"); Galanti was probably not entirely satisfied with Vincenzo's collaboration on his Descrizione Geografica e Politica delle Sicilie. During his studies, Cuoco was deeply influenced by Enlightenment writers from Southern Italy (Genovesi, Galiani, and of course Galanti) and France (Montesquieu, Rousseau), as well as by earlier writers, especially Giambattista Vico and Niccolò Machiavelli.

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