Le memorie dei funzionari di polizia italiani nell’età liberale in una prospettiva comparata

The article analyzes several examples of police memorials written for the public, appeared in Italy between the mid-nineteenth century and the years immediately following the First World War, comparing them with the much larger production of this type that was recorded in Great Britain and in France. The focus of the article is not addressed on the information in these memories, but rather to the circulation of the expository paradigms and narrative themes present in this literary genre, to first detect the derivation from the model of the emerging literature of intrigue and investigation, and then to highlight its autonomous development. This evolution appears to have been fully accomplished in the early twentieth century, especially in Great Britain and France, while it is much weaker in Italy, where the memorials of policemen did not find the support of publishers, even after some judicial misadventures. Affirmed as an autonomous genre, that of police memories becomes an important cultural tool to accompany the professionalization of the police, and to improve the image of the police in the public.