Donatella Pallotti, Paola Pugliatti (general editors). Maurizio Ascari, Gilberta Golinelli Editors), Early Modern Crime Literature.Ideology, Emotions and Social, Norms, JEMS 10

The volume explores the multi-layered, polyphonic and porous nature of crime literature as dynamised by social and cultural changes combining a literary approach and a socio-historical contextualisation. Early modern crime literature is revealing of social fissures, a mirror of the self-conflicting kaleidoscope of society, for crime is not only ‘constructed’ and perceived according to the moral and social codes of specific societies, but it also stimulates imaginative transpositions and even disrupting forms of creativity. Early modern crime literature covers a wide spectrum of genres, often translating into hybrid texts that present multiple and overlapping voices, including both recorded sources and the author. While exploring the connection between recorded crime and the literary imagination at various levels (from street literature to Shakespearean theatre), this collection delves into the ideological import of crime narratives intended as preventive of crime, a form of psychological ‘policing’ that compensated for the absence of organized police forces by reasserting the certainty of mundane and supernatural punishment. By investigating the conflicting social energies that in the early modern period concurred to a changing perception of crime, this issue of JEMS also aims to further our understanding of a transitional age that was marked by deep faultlines and sweeping changes. The essays contained in this issue scrutinize early modern crime literature through the filter of postmodern disciplines and ideologies, and in so doing they not only highlight its ideologically inflected and shifting nature as product and producer of disrupting energy and changes, but they are also indicative of its present significance. The team of critics who took up, together with the two editors, the challenge of directing a renewed critical gaze towards the early modern discourses of crime and criminals did so in full awareness of their relevance to our own understanding of the human experience.