Overview

"In the spring of 1757, the Augustinian friar Leopoldo di San Pasquale was tried in Naples by the hierarchies of his own religious order on charges of financial fraud, heresy, and sexual immorality. He responded by accusing the heads of the convent of subjecting him to a series of inhuman cruelties, claiming to have been ""buried alive"". While waiting for a final judgment (it was pronounced seven years later, in 1764), the trial of Leopoldo di San Pasquale became a cultural phenomenon unlike any witnessed before in Naples. Cumulatively, reactions to the trial, both during and after it, broke the boundaries separating chronicle and literary fiction, engaged people’s faculties of reason and emotion, and ultimately transformed Leopoldo into a public spectacle—or what we might call today a “celebrity.” Focusing on the scandalous affair of the ""buried alive"", this book shows how the governing authorities in Naples managed the development of news and stories around current events through their systems of courts and bureaucracies. It also aims to demonstrate how, just as importantly, consumers played an increasing in the spread of information, as means to political empowerment. The sources analyzed call for a microhistorical analysis, as well as for an interdisciplinary discussion with media studies at its conceptual core. A Criminal Hero will appeal to students and scholars alike interested in microhistory, cultural history, media history, history of literature, social and political history, with a focus on the eighteenth century."

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9781032722252

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Sotiris Manolopoulos’ work wells from a profound psychoanalytic understanding of the child’s interaction with the early maternal environment containing a tragic dimension from the very beginning. Without the mother’s silent work of mourning, it would possibly result in destructive consequences both at the individual and social level. The author’s linking this constellation to the ancient Greek tragedy in a creative way is a major achievement. Simon Salonen, M.D., Ph.D., Emeritus Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, University of Turku, Member of Finnish Psychoanalytical Society. Author of “Metapsychological Perspectives on Psychic Survival”. Deeply familiar with Greek mythology, and well versed in philosophy and psychoanalysis, Sotiris Manolopoulos throws a wide net to capture and bring together the individual, the clinical, the social and the political in their intricate connectedness. His thoughtful exploration of tragic theatre illuminates psychic life between passion and order, despair and resolution. A greatly enriching journey through the lands of ancient drama from the vantage point of contemporary psychoanalysis. Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau, Ph.D., Chair of the IPA in Culture Committee In this book Sotiris Manolopoulos takes the reader on a psychoanalytic Odyssey to explore some of the key Greek tragedies. Through a psychoanalytic lens familiar Greek characters are analysed to highlight the depths of the human psyche. It is an impressive endeavour that offers a compelling integration of both theatre and psychoanalysis. Jan Abram, Author of The Surviving Object: psychoanalytic clinical essays on psychic survival of-the-object (2022) New Library of Psychoanalysis, Routledge Sotiris Manolopoulos unpicks with mastery the thread of the souls of the heroes from Ancient tragedy, analysing their words and actions in the light of modern psychoanalysis and his clinical experience, displaying through the function of the chorus the connection between the collective and the individual at the point where the personal psyche, in order to be woven, consistently relies on the social and the sequence of passages through the Other, and the others, to the sufferer and the living subject. Thanassis Hatzopoulos is a child psychiatrist, psychoanalyst (member of the Société de Psychanalyse Freudienne, Paris, of the International Winnicott Association, Sao Paolo, and president of the Hellenic Psychoanalytical Space D. W. W, Athens) and a poet.

Author Information

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).

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