Marvelous Monsters. Crime, Cheap Print, and the Construction Otherness in Early Modern Italy (XVI-XVIII centuries)

My talk will explore some of the ‘atrocious,’ ‘horrendous,’ and ‘unfortunate’ stories of crime disseminated through ephemeral print in early modern Italy. Moving beyond their alleged documentary value, I will shed light on the intricate dynamics at play in these narratives. What happens when a criminal – already a radical ‘other’ within society – is associated with additional forms of perceived otherness? How do racial, ethnic, and religious stereotypes influence the perception and construction of a criminal’s story? In what ways do these stories contribute to reinforce or even create such stereotypes? How does the combination of criminality and otherness resonate with the pan-European and pan-Mediterranean scenario of political and religious tensions? I will examine three case studies that engage with different forms of otherness: ethnic and political otherness (Spaniards), religious otherness (Muslim people), and what I call “otherness from within”, that is, a form of otherness associated with rural, underdeveloped, and lesser-known areas of Italy. These examples will show that stories of crime, far from merely reporting ‘news’, served as the catalyst for political, societal, and religious tensions, reflecting anxieties about the dissolution of traditional social bonds, concerns over religious and ethnic impurity and political upheavals, and the staging of acts of cleansing and reconciliation within a wounded body politic.