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Resumen Esta investigación tiene por finalidad analizar el derecho de opción del acreedor, a la luz de la doctrina y jurisprudencia italianas. Este derecho, que equivale a mal llamada condición resolutoria tácita, está siendo objeto de revisión en Europa. Es interesante revisar el trabajo de los juristas itálicos, no solo porque éstos lo han abordado en vista de los principios del Derecho Civil, abandonando la visión exégeta del Derecho, sino que, además, con un criterio ecléctico. Abstract This research aims to analyze the creditor’s right of option, in light of the doctrine and the established understanding of Italian courts. This right, which is equivalent to so-called tacit condition subsequent, is under review in Europe. It is interesting to review the work of the Italians lawyers, not only because they have addressed it in the light of the principles of private law, rejecting the exegete vision of law, but also because they adopted an eclectic approach.

The defining characteristic of the fictional writings of Romano Bilenchi is the depiction of critical life events that determine and condition subsequent decisions as those individual choices interact with grand historical tendencies. The examination of memory, in Bilenchi's way of viewing things, allows the creative artist to intervene in the present in a way that would give a direction to history. Literary art is not autonomous of its historical context, but heteronomous to it. For Bilenchi, the writer who makes sense of the past is society's 'primary historian' and, therefore, the dialectical counterpart of the journalist, whose task is to record the present, and the politician, who must programme the future. By sharing responsibility in this way, the writer gains social relevance and incisiveness.

A lease is essentially a contract which creates an interest in land. Any contract may be made subject to certain conditions, and leases are no exception to this rule. The condition may be a condition precedent, so that the lease does not take effect at all unless the condition is fulfilled, or a condition subsequent, whereby the lease terminates should the condition on which it is granted cease to apply and the landlord therefore has a right to re-enter.

The jubilee of the Journal happens to coincide with the centenary of Head v. Tattersall, the well-known but troublesome case in which the buyer of a horse was allowed to exercise a contractual right to return it (for failure to answer a warranty that it “had been hunted with the Bicester hounds”), despite the fact that it had been accidentally injured in the meantime and could be restored to the seller only in a damaged state. Most contract textbooks cite this as the classic instance of the condition subsequent, by virtue of which a contract or obligation, although initially effective, ceases to operate on the occurence of a specified event. It is apparent, however, on closer analysis that it was not the contract or any aspect of it which was terminated because the horse failed to meet the warranty, but the buyer's title: in other words, the property in the horse passed to the buyer immediately, but defeasibly, so that when he rejected the horse he divested himself of the title and revested it in the seller. Even this explanation leaves on one side the question of the damage sustained by the horse. In the language of the law of sale, it would be most natural to regard this issue as one of risk, and to say that the court held in effect, and indeed perhaps expressly, that the horse was at the seller's risk during the period allowed for its return.

The ancient maxim pacta sunt servanda requires faithful performance of contractual obligations, except when physically impossible. The problem, to what extent substantial change of circumstances also should relieve the obligor from the now onerous burden of his obligation, has been put into new and urgent focus by the economic developments of the Twentieth Century. In medieval law, difficultas became an excuse for performance as a direct contribution of canon law' and its ethical outlook, which considered good intention equal to performance. The early codifications of the eighteenth century2 solved the problem more cautiously by means of the clausula rebus sic stantibus-the theory that every contract is subject to the implied condition (operating as a condition subsequent)3 that circumstances in existence at its conclusion would not change. The same theory has been advanced for the interpretation of treaties, the contracts of nations.4 In private law, however, the clausula doctrine lost currency in Europe, particularly in Germany, during the Nineteenth Century. Causes contributing to its demise were the influence of the school of scientific positivism, the advocacy by the historical school of classical concepts, particularly of Roman law, which denied relief for frustration, and emerging concepts of eco