1st Edition
A Criminal Hero Justice, Politics and Media Culture in Eighteenth-Century Naples
Introduction
Chapter 1: “Buried Alive:” Leopoldo and the Style of the Holy Office (1757–1767)
Chapter 2: Justice, Literature, and Public Space
Chapter 3: A Participatory Tale: Verbal, Visual, and Written Forms of Communication
Chapter 4: Literary Communication and the Building of a Political Culture
Conclusion: A Hidden Identity in the Theater of the World
Biography
Pasquale Palmieri is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Naples “Federico II.” He is Ph.D. in History of European Society (University of Naples Federico II, 2008) and Italian Studies (University of Texas at Austin, 2021). His research interests include early modern media and literary culture, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between politics and religion. His recent publications include Le cento vite di Cagliostro (2023) and The Land of Devotion. Saints, Politics and Media Culture in 18th-Century Italy (2023).
‘Palmieri’s study exposes the tangled web of eighteenth-century Neapolitan media culture, with its intermingling of different genres and power contests. A concise but rich and deeply researched analysis … the study documents the effect that words, written, printed, published, and disseminated, had on people’s understanding of justice and criminality … Although Palmieri’s microhistorical analysis deliberately restricts its geographical and temporal scope by largely focusing on a single individual, the scholar’s transmedial approach is relevant to examinations of the intersection between media culture and power systems, both within Italian studies and beyond. In our current moment, dominated by false news and in which the political landscape bears witness to the increasingly elusive nature of truth, Palmieri’s study feels particularly timely’ - ANNALI D’ITALIANISTICA (Volume 43, 2025).
