MANZONI AND THE DISCOURSES OF HISTORY AND FICTION David Forgacs I On 3 November 1821, having composed Adelchi, Manzoni writes to Claude Fauriel that the insufficient histori- cal research he has put into the play has given it 'une couleur romanesque, qui ne s'accorde pas avec l'ensemble, et qui me choque moi-meme tout comme un lecteur mal dispose'.l He adds that he has written a historical discourse which he will publish with the play and which will make this fault still more apparent: As a critical reader of his own text, Manzoni is scandal- ized by its romance elements. In the movement from writing to reading, the author of Adelchi, a dramatic poet, becomes the author of the Discorso sopra alcuni punti della storia longobardica in Italia, a historian. From the point of view of its genesis, this Discorso is a derived text, a digression into the background of the verse drama Adelchi. But it is only a digression in relation to a text of poetry or invention. In relation to other historical texts it is part of a chain, and in this respect it moves into the foreground in relation to the poetic text. Manzoni himself is adamant about its autonomy from Adelchi. As he says in the introductory paragraphs, 'vi avrebbe di vano e di puerile' in expend- ing so many words just to back up the historical view presented in a tragedy. The point is rather to indicate 'quanto importi questa storia e quanto ancora ella ci manchi' and to encourage other researchers to follow his lead (IV, 182). This autonomy of the Discorso is further underscored by a declared switch of addressee: no longer the general readers of the play but those 'ai quali alcune pagine di ricerche storiche non fanno terrore' (IV, 181). And then there is its length: 121 pages of small print following 139 pages of widely spaced play- script in the first edition of Adelchi (Ferrario, Milan 1822) which visibly declares the seriousness and