THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE DETECTIVE: THE PROTAGONIST’S POWER TO CHALLENGE, SHAPE AND MEND THROUGH SOCIAL CRITIQUE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES BY ELIZABETH ANNE FIEDLER CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2017 A thousand thanks to Rebecca West, whose patience and sage advice were essential. To Armando Maggi, I am ever grateful for your generosity and attention to detail. Maria Anna Mariani, thank you so very much for pointing me in new directions. To my family and friends, whose encouragement and support made everything possible, and who created those moments of laughter that help things slide into the thinking. ii Abstract In the giallo (Italian detective novel), this study finds an elevated capacity for social critique, joining a conversation about literature’s role in upholding or critiquing and ultimately working to change social constructs and institutions. It also explores the role of the detective character in determining the viewpoint, attitude, and scope of the Italian detective novel in this activity of critique. Collectively, the novels in this study reveal two main patterns among the most intensely characterized Italian detective protagonists: the first is a strong sense of localism, understood as the tendency to give one’s allegiance to local entities rather than the state, and to adhere to not national but local traditions and customs. The second is a complex attitude toward official institutions involving mistrust of the same combined with cautious optimism in moral judgments, resulting in the necessary separation of the concepts of absolute and official justice. This study focuses on the detective’s relationship to institutions of law and order and to concepts of abstract justice, on his relationship to place and setting and thereby to identities and center-periphery paradigms, and on the detective character’s use of humor as social critique. The detective emerges as the focal point from which the giallo engages in a modern iteration of the poeta vate, the civic poet concerned with writing the way to a better state. When one treats the giallo detective character as a guide for reading the work as a whole, it emphasizes the giallo’s potential for social critique and even social healing; the genre employs Nussbaumian narrative tools to form an ethical, compassionate, and emotionally intelligent readership as well as promoting problematic reflections on local and national Italian culture, identity, and official institutions. iii Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Giallo Detectives: Rule-Breakers and Social Healers 14 Introduction 14 I. The Giallo and the Law: Tense Relations from the Beginning 23 II. Critique and Empathy: Two Giallo Representations of Fascism and the Fascist Period 31 III. Nussbaumian Poet-Detectives: Sciascia and Camilleri 59 IV. Avvocato Guido Guerrieri and the Judicial System: Tampering with Law and Language 81 V. Conclusion 102 Chapter 2 Setting, Geography, Insiders, and Outsiders 104 Introduction 104 I. The Soul of the Place and the Allure of the Detective Story 109 II. Setting, the Past, and Temporality in the Ricciardi Novels 124 III. Regional Characteristics and Stereotypes, Personification of the Setting 138 IV. Nationalism and Regionalism as Virtues and Values and as Sources of Unease 144 iv V. Crime, Violence, and Center-Periphery Paradigms 150 VI. Detectives as Insiders and Outsiders 156 VII. Conclusion 166 Chapter 3 What’s So Funny About the Giallo? Humor and Social Conscience in Television Adaptations of the Giallo 168 Introduction 168 I. L’Ispettore Coliandro: The “Mistake” of a Character We Love to Laugh At 181 II. Commissario Montalbano: Ironic Humor, Sfogo and Social Commentary 220 III. Avvocato Guerrieri, the Adaptation that Failed to be Ironic 246 IV. Conclusion 252 Conclusion 256 Bibliography 262 v Introduction The early history of the Italian detective story is intertwined with the history of imported detective stories from other languages, especially French and English. Certain details in that early history of the genre (the early 20th century) reflect a complex rapport full of tensions between the characteristics and tendencies of the genre on one hand and the prevailing social values or cultural and civic priorities of the institutions in power at the time on the other. For the purposes of this project I focus mainly on more recent gialli by Italian authors, and I argue that the genre’s emphasis on social meaning and critique developed in large part in response to the political and cultural environment of the Fascist period in which the giallo emerges in Italy. The most easily discerned event signaling the birth of the Italian giallo is the inclusion in the Mondadori series I libri gialli of Il Sette Bello by Alessandro Varaldo in 1931, two years after the inception of the series. I libri gialli was not the only series instituted by an Italian publisher to 1 meet high popular demand for the genre, but it was the largest, continued the longest, and was most prolific; the books’ distinctive yellow jackets also gave the genre its name. In the 1930s, the series was dominated by foreign authors from countries with a more established mystery/noir literature; the inclusion of Il Sette Bello and other Italian works was largely due to a law that required at least 20% of the works in a given series to be Italian productions. Mussolini’s Minculpop (Ministero della cultura popolare) instituted a ban on the giallo in 1941, and although some works in the genre were published regardless, the Mondadori series itself was on hiatus from 1941 until the after the end of World War II, in 1946. Of the gialli that were published during the ban, most had notable fascist, nationalistic, or anti-Semitic overtones. Italian giallisti at the time also set many of their novels in foreign settings, as a way to avoid violating other restrictions on the genre (e.g., the culprit must not be Italian). The regime’s suspicion of the genre was rooted in the idea that it had the capacity to cast doubt on or criticize the official, idealistic narrative of the fascist state as peaceful and orderly, through the depiction of crime and criminals, as well as through explicitly or implicitly pointing out shortcomings on the part of the police and other organs of law and order.1 Even if Haycraft’s assertion that crime fiction can only be written in democracies because it relies on concepts of absolute justice is an oversimplification,2 overlooking as he does the possibility of multiple concepts of justice, he is onto something important; the gialli produced in the fascist-era are many of them formulaic or 1. This distrust of the giallo forms a strange counterpoint to the common stereotype of the genre, also present since its origins, as superficial, escapist literature. The conventional wisdom that the giallo is not “real literature,” whatever that means, is belied by this contradiction on the part of the fascist government: how can shallow escapism pose such a threat? 2 unconvincing, and it took a few more decades for the genre to regain a solid footing and to mature to a level comparable to French- and English-language detective novels. Augusto De Angelis is one of a very few giallisti of that time whose works are still read, re-published, and studied today, and it seems no accident that he saw his work as a modern far versi, the undertaking of the great civic poets of the past. His incarceration for anti-fascist activities and his death at the hands of a fascist activist should come as no surprise, either. Early Italian gialli, including Varaldo’s novels, utilize striking stylistic improvisation that crosses genres (e.g. a “rosa” romantic happy ending, or paranormal elements that provide essential clues),3 but also strong influences from foreign literature: aspects of Anglo-American tradition beyond the detective novel, and especially elements borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon positivist detectives in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes. Common to all gialli is the impetus to restore order, to discover a narrative of the facts of the case that makes logical sense and reassuringly upholds ideas of justice and law; in the literary narrative of the giallo, this is achieved by retelling the testimonies and realities of victims, witnesses, and criminals alike, primarily through the detective’s point of view. On the other hand, the characteristics of irony and distance also demonstrate the giallo’s early tendency toward a political and social critique that belies the possibility of always finding that comforting or all-explaining narrative; while valuing an abstract or ideal justice, the genre is also skeptical of official narratives of justice and law from the start. Such is the case in the novels of Augusto de Angelis featuring the police 2. Howard Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure, 1941. 3. Elvio Guagnini, Dal giallo al noir e oltre: Declinazioni del poliziesco italiano, 19. 3 detective De Vincenzi, whose repeated efforts to get inside the criminal mind run counter to the Fascist distrust of psychology, and who carries out investigations by scrutinizing the details of a scene and the behavior of persons of interest to an extent that his colleagues never consider, instead preferring the most obvious narrative, if not the most coherent. The giallo presents itself as the literary alternative to institutional narratives of justice and order, and it may even have the potential to contribute to the formation of a more just and compassionate society. Precursors and cousins to the Italian giallo have also featured distinctive, specific characterization of the detective figure almost since the beginning. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes from the English tradition is one of the most internationally recognizable characters in literature and on stage and screen.4 Inspector Morse and Hercule Poirot, created by Colin Dexter and Agatha Christie respectively,5 are just two of many other iconic fictional detectives in the same tradition.