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The works of Giorgio Scerbanenco repeatedly articulate and explore the implications of new forms of criminality that emerged in Italy's post-war transformation towards its "economic miracle". An indepth analysis of Scerbanenco's Duca Lamberti series constitutes the critical focus of this study, and in particular the psychological resonances of the role played by the author's controversial representation of the urban space, its violence, (in)justice and gender roles. In what way do these elements heighten and/or exaggerate the nature of the criminal acts and the reader's experience? This study therefore investigates a reader's potential response to the content, the settings, and, above all, the characters Scerbanenco portrays in these four novels.
List of contents
Contents: Cecilia Scerbanenco: Preface - Introduction: Crime Fiction and the Question of Literary Genre - Italian Crime Fiction from its Origins to the 1960s - Giorgio Scerbanenco: From giallo to noir - The Arthur Jelling series - Evolution of Crime in Italy's Post-war Period - Urban Environments and Crime: Criminal Metamorphoses in the Urban Space Urban Space through Symbols - Violence, Justice and Moral (Dis)Orientation: Violence as a Principle for Moral Evaluation - Moral (Dis)Orientation: The Justifiable Act of Violence - Female Characters and Gender Identity: Controlled Unconventional Female Characters - The Economic Miracle: a Collective Cultural Trauma.
About the author
Dr Marco Paoli is a lecturer in Italian Studies and Head of Italian at the University of Liverpool. His main areas of research are Italian crime fiction and Italian cinema. He is particularly interested in the Italian economic miracle and its influence on crime as reflected in Italian literature and cinema of the post war period. He has published studies on, among others, Carlo Lizzani, Fernando Di Leo, Paolo Virzì and Giorgio Scerbanenco.
Report
«Marco Paoli's book contains an original and well-documented critical analysis of Giorgio Scerbanenco's crime novels, [...]. As the first full-length monograph on Scerbanenco in English, this book provides a praiseworthy contribution to advancing the study of an author who has long been marginalized for writing popular fiction, and whose works, as Paoli convincingly argues, 'deserve to be the subject of detailed critical analysis'.»
(Alberica Bazzoni, Modern Language Review 112/2017)
