Giuseppe Mazzini played a key role in the discovery and reception of the works of Foscolo in Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century. During his exile, the founder of the Giovine Italia had the opportunity to discover the unpublished documents left by Foscolo in London: a commentary on the Divine Comedy and the Lettera apologetica. Since his youth, Mazzini considered the poet and novelist as his personal model; in his essays, he construed the image of Foscolo as a main figure of the ‘Italian tradition’, the initiator of Risorgimento’s democratic school and of the concept of literature as action. But the discovery of Foscolo’s works and the notes he wrote during his exile in London also led Mazzini to propose a patriotic reading of the Comedy illustrated, and to develop the Risorgimento image of Foscolo as a prophet in exile, which in turn gave more authority to the views he expressed from abroad, and contributed to transform exile in a constitutive myth of Risorgimento.