L'altro Beccaria: torsioni e tensioni nel Mezzogiorno borbonico

In the age of Enlightenment, Dei delitti e delle pene was an absolute bestseller across Europe. In particular, in the Kingdom of Naples it cause an immediate, long-lasting and intense reaction with a largely political strain, not only as a critical libel about the current criminal law, but above all as a formidable ideological war machine against the ancient regime, its social hierarchies, moral axiology and the set of rules which were its very foundation. This essay examines the different interpretations on Dei Delitti e delle pene in the second half of the 18th century, in the provinces and in Sicily, highlighting Antonio Genovesi's role, the circulation of the book in the so-called Genovesi >, the reactions at the first Neapolitan edition of Beccaria's works, the fruitful interaction between Dei Delitti e delle pene and the coeval political conflict during the 177080s, resulting in the French Revolution and the declaration of the Republic in 1799, through the Restoration and the French decade, getting as far as the start of the 19th century, when in 182021 the ideas of the famous Lombard Marquis were once more advocated