GIORNALE ARCADICO. - A literary periodical published in Rome from 1819 to 1856; it was the official organ of a group of literary figures, including G. Perticari and S. Betti, who, due to their taste for the lofty language and solemn style, their love for classical tradition, and their aversion to any foreign innovation, wished to oppose a bulwark against the Romantic invasion.
The journal was thus decisively inspired by a well-pronounced classical literary style; and it was the expression of a society that the times were beginning to surpass. Similar in its content to the 18th-century literary journals, its literary orientation appeared anti-Manzonian; nonetheless, its contributors developed a program that had some merit both for the admiration they professed for Dante—thus anticipating by several decades the great interest that Dante studies would arouse toward the end of the century—and for the defense they upheld of the Italian language.
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