Methods of Murder : Beccarian Introspection and Lombrosian Vivisection in Italian Crime Fiction

Past traces the roots of the twentieth-century literature and cinema of crime to two much earlier, diverging interpretations of the criminal: the bodiless figure of Cesare Beccaria’s Enlightenment-era __On Crimes and Punishments__, and the biological offender of Cesare Lombroso’s positivist __Criminal Man__

The first extended analysis of the relationship between Italian criminology and crime fiction in English, Methods of Murder examines works by major authors both popular, such as Gianrico Carofiglio, and canonical, such as Carlo Emilio Gadda.

Many scholars have argued that detective fiction did not exist in Italy until 1929, and that the genre, which was considered largely Anglo-Saxon, was irrelevant on the Italian peninsula. By contrast, Past traces the roots of the twentieth-century literature and cinema of crime to two much earlier, diverging interpretations of the criminal: the bodiless figure of Cesare Beccaria’s Enlightenment-era On Crimes and Punishments, and the biological offender of Cesare Lombroso’s positivist Criminal Man.

Through her examinations of these texts, Past demonstrates the links between literary, philosophical, and scientific constructions of the criminal, and provides the basis for an important reconceptualization of Italian crime fiction.

The first extended analysis of the relationship between Italian criminology and crime fiction in English, Methods of Murder examines works by major authors both popular, such as Gianrico Carofiglio, and canonical, such as Carlo Emilio Gadda. Many scholars have argued that detective fiction did not exist in Italy until 1929, and that the genre, which was considered largely Anglo-Saxon, was irrelevant on the Italian peninsula. By contrast, Past traces the roots of the twentieth-century literature and cinema of crime to two much earlier, diverging interpretations of the criminal: the bodiless figure of Cesare Beccaria's Enlightenment-era On Crimes and Punishments, and the biological offender of Cesare Lombroso's positivist Criminal Man. Through her examinations of these texts, Past demonstrates the links between literary, philosophical, and scientific constructions of the criminal, and provides the basis for an important reconceptualization of Italian crime fiction Contents 7 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction: The Mysterious Case of Crime Fiction in Italy 11 PART ONE. Beccarian Introspection 33 1. Investigative Introspection: Cesare Beccaria’s Disembodied Criminal 33 2. Dark Ends for Leonardo Sciascia’s Enlightened Detectives 59 3. Andrea Camilleri’s Sicilian Simulacrum 92 4. Violence and the Law in Gianrico Carofiglio’s Beccarian Courtroom 117 PART TWO. Lombrosian Vivisection 143 5. Cesare Lombroso Vivisects the Criminal 145 6. Carlo Emilio Gadda’s Bodies of Evidence 181 7. Dario Argento’s Aesthetics of Violence 217 8. Carlo Lucarelli’s Lombrosian Nightmare 248 Epilogue: Crime in the Twenty-First Century 279 Notes 287 References 341 Index 357