Murder and Media in the New Rome : The Fadda Affair

An insightful look into the origins of modern Italian media culture by examining a sensational crime and trial that took place in Rome in the late 1870s, when a bloody murder triggered a national spectacle that became the first great media circus in the new nation of Italy, crucially shaping the young state's public sphere and image of itself. "In this imaginatively yet scrupulously researched study, Simpson turns an ephemeral scandal of adultery and murder into a tool with which to reconstruct the intersecting, evolving realms of a national public life which collided in early post-Risorgimento Italy. The so-called 'Fadda Affair' becomes a prism through which are reflected (among other things) trial by jury all'italiana, the emergence of popular scandal-mongering journalism, the myths and social realities of the Italian military, the role - or lack thereof - of women in the public sphere, the rise of the circus as popular entertainment, and the violent clash of North and South. Simpson tells his tale brilliantly and wisely, and in the process gives us a unique new window onto the disconcerting spectacle of Italy, and Italians, in the making."--Albert Russell Ascoli, Terrill Distinguished Professor, University of California, Berkeley "Supported by meticulous research and insightful analysis of varied contemporary sources, Murder and Media in the New Rome is an informed study of 'the first great media circus' in the new Italian state. Simpson examines the Fadda trial as the stage where participants and audience enacted wider social, cultural, and gender conflicts. This book offers a fascinating study of how numerous interpreters such as painters, novelists, poets, lawyers, and especially the new media protagonists - the newspaper reporters - depicted these conflicts in varying and meaningful ways. Written in an eminently readable prose-style that captures vividly the drama of murder and its aftermath, this book provides an original discussion of a now-forgotten event that gathered mass attention in late nineteenth-century Italy. In doing so, it furnishes a glimpse of a whole period of Italian history that is generally overlooked in the English-speaking world."--Cristina Della Coletta, Professor of Italian, University of Virginia This book explores a sensational crime and trial that took place in Rome in the late 1870s, when the bloody killing of a war hero triggered a national spectacle. A young southern wife's murder of her impotent soldier husband exploded into the first great "media circus" in the new nation of Italy. The trial of the widow and her acrobat lover shocked the young nation not only with its gruesome details, but also because masses of women flocked to the court, took sides and heatedly reacted to testimony, as a new generation of newspapers exploited the scandal to enchant an untapped readership. Largely ignored by historians, the Fadda Affair, as it was called, crucially shaped the young nation's self-image, but it still resists reduction to historiographical formula, even as its raucous messiness presages the postmodern centrality of performance and the displacement of substance by sensation Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction....Pages 1-8 The Crime and Its Coverage....Pages 9-25 Journalism in Rome after National Unification....Pages 27-53 Chronology of a Circus Trial....Pages 55-67 The People, the Killer, and the Weeping Widow....Pages 69-96 In Corte d’Assise....Pages 97-115 King and Quartermaster....Pages 117-131 “To Liberate Italy from the Italians”....Pages 133-147 Poor Giovanni Fadda....Pages 149-169 A New War Experiment....Pages 171-182 Characters....Pages 183-204 Conclusion....Pages 205-208 Back Matter....Pages 209-264