“Misfits” in Fin-de-Siècle France and Italy

As the 19th century drew to a close, France and Italy experienced an explosion of crime, vagrancy, insanity, neurosis and sexual deviance. “Misfits” in Fin-de-Siècle France and Italy examines how the raft of self-appointed experts that subsequently emerged tried to explain this aberrant behavior and the many consequences this had.

Susan A. Ashley considers why these different phenomena were unders...