The Intellectual As a Detective ― From Leonardo Sciascia to Roberto Saviano

Covering the period between the sixties and the present, Castagnino discusses the intellectual as detective in Italian novels. This period finds several novelists using crime fiction to reflect on the social function of intellectuals--their relationships with institutions and their recurring condition of isolation. In most of the novels discussed in this volume, the detective believes an intellectual approach will bring a solution, but is ultimately defeated--a situation the author posits as a reflection of the end of the illusions that culture could actively affect national history. There are seven chapters: the isolation of the intellectual in the works of Leonardo Sciascia; the professor investigates: Pontiggia, Piazzese, Seminerio; the intellectual between obscurantism and renovation: Umberto Eco’s Il nome della rosa; injustice, memory and death in the novels of Antonio Tabucchi; investigating the condition of women: Dacia Maraini’s Voci; intellectuals in noir; from Pasolini to Saviano: reality, fiction and literature of inquiry. There is a bibliography and appendixes. No index. Annotation c2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Angelo Castagnino is Assistant Professor of Italian at University of Denver. His interests focus on the narrative construction of the intellectual as a character, the detective novel and the social commitment of Italian intellectuals.