«A voi nata e cresciuta tra letterati insigni». Una lettera di Cesare Cantù alla contessa Maffei

The essay by Luca Bani presents some unpublished documents, kept at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, drawn from the small correspondence between Cesare Cantù and Clara Maffei. Among them, a particular interest arises from the minute of a letter to Maffei dating back to 1851, in which Cantù presents to the recipient his arguments in defense of his book entitled "Letteratura italiana esposta alla gioventù per via d’esempi", which had been fiercely criticized by Carlo Tenca in a review in «Il Crepuscolo» magazine. The analysis of this document seeks to clarify the terms of the specific question and, at the same time, it intends to recreate the literary debate climate that was created around Countess Maffei’s “salotto” and that involved important figures in the Milanese, Lombardy and Italian culture of those years such as Cesare Cantù.