The concept of a constant reformulation of the canon due to the notion of singularity or irreducibility of the case can be applied in both scientific and literary fields. In this volume, dynamics of interconnections between the case and the canon are analysed by scholars belonging to different disciplines such as physics, medicine, biology, psychoanalysis, and literature. Particular attention has been given to the science of detection since the techniques of investigation are based on the scientific acquisition of evidence and often imply a scientific (abductive) process. The book is divided into two sections: Part I concentrates mainly on literary contributions and psychological issues, while part II concentrates on scientific enquiries. The contributions have been selected according to two main guidelines: The first covers anomalies, discontinuities, metaphors between science and literature. The second focus lies on the case in crime fiction: The scientist as detective and the detective as scientist.

Ancient Rome has always been considered a compendium of City and World. In the Renaissance, an era of epistemic fractures, when the clash between the 'new science' (Copernicus, Galileo, Vesalius, Bacon, etcetera) and the authority of ancient texts produced the very notion of modernity, the extended and expanding geography of ancient Rome becomes, for Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, a privileged arena in which to question the nature of bodies and the place they hold in a changing order of the universe. Drawing on the rich scenario provided by Shakespeare's Rome, and adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, the authors of this volume address the way in which the different bodies of the earthly and heavenly spheres are re-mapped in Shakespeare's time and in early modern European culture. More precisely, they investigate the way bodies are fashioned to suit or deconstruct a culturally articulated system of analogies between earth and heaven, microcosm and macrocosm. As a whole, this collection brings to the fore a wide range of issues connected to the Renaissance re-mapping of the world and the human. It should interest not only Shakespeare scholars but all those working on the interaction between sciences and humanities.