1,721,085 research outputs found
(UN)SUITABLE JOBS: FEMALE DETECTIVES IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY ITALIAN LITERATURE
No full textScholars have consistently neglected early twentieth-century Italian crime fiction, dismissing its manifestations as aesthetically worthless and ideologically conservative. The female investigator, I contend, represents instead an extremely anomalous, defiant figure that questions and challenges deep-seated assumptions concerning womanhood and the relationship between women, society, and the work force. The present article analyzes this strictly understudied literary figure within a series of texts published in the years that immediately preceded the outbreak of the First World War. After an historical contextualization, I will focus on two novels written by popular writer Carolina Invernizio – Nina, la poliziotta dilettante (1909) and Lara, l’avventuriera (1910) – in order to explore the ways in which intertwining ideas of femininity and professionalism were perceived, discussed, and negotiated at the time. This essay, ultimately, questions the apparently comforting and un-subversive character of the detective story, bringing to light an array of obscure and forgotten texts that help not only to broaden the canon of early Italian crime fiction but also to re-think the form as potentially challenging and problematic
Immagini e criminalità nell’Italia di fine secolo tra stampa, letteratura e scienza
No full textIl presente articolo analizza la disseminazione dell’immagine criminale nell’Italia a cavallo tra Otto e Novecento all’interno di tre diverse aree discorsive – la cronaca nera, il romanzo popolare, la scienza criminologica – con l’obiettivo di svelare il complesso, e spesso contraddittorio, ruolo giocato dalla cultura visuale nella rielaborazione e popolarizzazione di idee, concetti e percezioni legati al crimine e alla sua ambigua natura. L’immagine, come intendo dimostrare, complica e sovverte tradizionali interpretazioni riguardanti la posizione occupata da stampa e letteratura criminale nella riconfigurazione dell’idea stessa di delinquenza e nell’individuazione di nuovi strumenti per comprenderla e arginarla, restituendo i contorni di uno scenario più sfumato e conflittuale, che invita necessariamente a ulteriori analisi e approfondimenti
Between Resistance and Canonisation: A Critique of Italian Crime Criticism
No full textThis article reconstructs the various, and at times contradictory, phases of the critical debate on Italian crime fiction from national unification to the present day. I rely on the key ideas of 'resistance' and 'canonisation' with the intention of showing how, over this long span of time, they have alternately polarised and reframed the nature of the debate, changing its coordinates and shaping scholarship on the subject. This analysis will highlight the constitutive anomalies, limits, and shortcomings of Italian crime criticism, from the repeated conventionalisation of the genre's historical development to the inadequacy of its theoretical conceptualisation. Thus, I will demonstrate that, far from disappearing, the deep-seated dichotomy between 'literary' and 'popular' fiction, with the latter being seen as aesthetically and ideologically insignificant, has now simply metamorphosed and assumed different, often undetected guises. Finally, I will argue that it is necessary to eradicate dominant perceptions and existing critical paradigms - the rigid concepts of 'genre' and 'canon', and the narrow framework of the nation - in order to facilitate a fuller and more comprehensive understanding of Italian crime fiction and its complex and multifaceted history
The refinement of geomorphological and geochemical statistical techniques in the study of clay-basin tectonics: The era basin (central Italy)
No full textA comparative approach to neotectonic studies is presented, which encompasses the integration of geochemical, morphological and structural analyses. Nine-hundred-nine-teen soil gas samples were collected in the Era basin (Tuscany, Central Italy) and their helium contents were measured. Helium distribution has been compared with location and orientation of known brittle deformations (faults and fractures) and morphological features obtained by air-photo interpretation and drainage network analyses. Obtained data were statistically compared by means of rose dia-gram plots concerning the investigated parameters and locally studied by associating the observed helium anomaly ridges with the known morphological and structural elements. The statistical approach showed a good convergence between the applied methodologies. Data from geomorphological, mesostructural, and geochemical surveys are consistent with the NE-SW and NW-SE orientations, i.e. Apennine and anti-Apennine trend of the known structural pattern. Moreover the apparent N-S and E-W trending helium anomalies are thought to be due to the Middle Pleistocene deformation phase along these directions. The relationship between helium distribution and the strain field is strengthen by the good correspondence, at local scale, among geochemical data and results of the structural and geomorphological features (Orciatico-Montecatini Val di Cecina and Peccioli areas). However helium soil gas technique showed to be a sensible tool for neotectonic studies in clay basin, as soil gas defines the leakage of deep seated gas along tectonic discontinuities even if they have no surface evidence and where the clay deposit is hundreds of meters thick
Illusionismo e magia nel Golden Age mystery
Full text linkThe Golden Age of detective fiction, usually delimitated between 1914 and 1940, coincides with the Golden Age of theatrical magic. Mystery and magic are linked by various elements such as the persistence of the challenge (between writer and readers or between magician and audience), the power of suggestion, the role of the stage and the attraction towards the impossible. Mystery writing and stage magic both rely on conjuring tricks, devices and misdirection. Starting from this premise, I will discuss two different ways in which theatrical magic has influenced Golden Age writers. While writers such as John Dickson Carr, Hake Talbot and Clayton Rawson – mostly from the United States – would thematise magic, others made an “illusionistic” use of language and narrative in order to confound and misdirect the readers. This technique – which is ultimately rooted in Edgar Allan Poe’s work – recurs in Agatha Christie’s books, where “the quickness of the hand deceives the eye”
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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