April Blood and the Pazzi Conspiracy

Let' s talk about Florentine history in literature.

The Pazzy Conspiracy (1478)

CSI Florence: Creative Writing Workshop with Marco Simonelli

Our writer and poet, Marco Simonelli, entitled our worshop "CSI Florence"


1) First Step Nick Cave and Kylie Monogue "Where the Wild Roses Grow" (murder, love, passion, possession, beauty and the wild side, etc)

2) What is a monster? Latin root "mostrare", to show = Gods used to send monsters as an omen that something horrible would happen

Dante's Inferno, Cerbero

3) Serial killers

Jack the Ripper




4) The Monster of Florence, first murder  

August 21, 1968: Antonio Lo Bianco (29) and Barbara Locci (32), lovers, shot to death with a .22 Beretta in Signa, a small town to the west of Florence, while Locci's son Natalino Mele (6) lay asleep in the back seat of the car. The child woke up and, finding his mother dead, fled in fright. At 2 a.m. he arrived in front of a house nearby and knocked on the door, telling the landlord: "Open the door and let me in, I'm sleepy and my Daddy is sick in bed. Then you have to drive me home, because my Mommy and my uncle are dead in their car." Natalino initially said he had run away alone, then changed his story and stated that his father – or maybe an uncle of his, as he used to call his mother's lovers "uncle" – had driven him to the house where he asked for help. Years later he said again that he was alone, but was too shocked to remember exactly what happened on that night. Locci was famous in the town because of her multiple love affairs, and so she had received the nickname Ape Regina (queen bee). Locci's husband, an ingenuous man named Stefano Mele, was eventually charged with the murder and spent six years in jail, but even while he was in prison, more couples were murdered with the same gun.

5) Let's reenact the first murder
Sam = killer, Erin = woman, Andrew= her lover, Jack= kid

6) Let's write our impressions... points of view (see comments)

7) Let's write a poem (see comments)

Thriller

►   Uses suspense, tension and excitement

►   Includes many sub genres= Mystery, Crime, Psychological, Political, etc..

►   Atmosphere= violence, crime and murder.

►   Society = dark, corrupt, and dangerous

► Literary devices = plot twist, red herrings, cliff hangers, multiple lines of action, etc.

Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report"  (2002)

Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960)

The Monster of Florence, Italian Serial Killers and the Dark Side of Italy

Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi's "The Monster of Florence"

Click here to watch the 50 minute TV show about Preston and Spezi's book


TED.COM. Jim Fallon, "Exploring the Mind of a Serial Killer" (2009)

History Channel, "The Monster of Florence" (in Italian)

Hannibal in Florence, Serial Killers and Beauty

Thomas Harris'  "Hannibal" (1999) and Ridley Scott's Hannibal (2001)

References:

Dante's Inferno (Pier delle Vigne)

The Pazzi Conspiracy

The Monster of Florence, serial killer

Inside and Outside Santa Croce

Following E.M. Foster's example in "A Room with a View", be inspired by Santa Croce and use it as a location for a short story. Write a short treatment.

Our Short Story - Change of Point of View

Here is the rewriting of our short story using the first person singular... let's explore and analyse the changes!

George Simenon

Ralph Waldo Emerson