La legitimación de la violencia en la comedia española del siglo XVII (review)

This thoroughly-researched text utilizes literary criticism, studies in psychology, sociology, history, mythology, folklore, and Greek and Roman literature to show that violence in seventeenth-century Spanish theater is neither gratuitous nor the result of social codes, but rather "un complejo proceso ritualizado" (15). The study relies principally on the theories of René Girard, Walter Burkert, and Jonathan Smith to examine La Numancia, Fuenteovejuna, El castigo sin venganza, La fianza satisfecha, El dueño de las estrellas, and El médico de su honra and to demonstrate the motivations, consequences, and contradictions in the unconscious use of ritual to justify violence in the comedia.

The analysis is, in great measure, compelling, but not always convincing. In "La ritualización de la venganza y la alternancia de roles en Fuenteovejuna," Petro del Barrio proposes to analyze the prolonged torture scene of the fuenteovejuneros to show "un ciclo originado por la violencia ejercida por el Comendador, continuado por los villanos en lo que será un perfecto ritual sacralizado de la venganza, y que culminará con el ritual purificador que será precisamente esa tortura ordenada por los Reyes Católicos" (41). Her conclusion is that the peasants have become "tiranos empezando por cometer el mismo error que había cometido su víctima: condenar a alguien sin juicio. Los villanos asumen el papel de crueles verdugos" (65). It is reasonable to claim that external forces—the town's social, economic, political, and religious disorder—cause tensions that are unleashed on the abusive Comendador for the purpose of restoration of social order and that the peasants' appeal to divine and civil authority, embodied in the monarchs, is part of the necessary social ritual to justify their crime. While it is a fact that the peasants have committed a grave and unjustifiable crime against civil and natural law by assassinating and dismembering their lord, the conclusion that they are not portrayed as idyllic and, therefore, have committed a crime equal to that of their lord, is not persuasive.

To show the alternation of roles of victimizer and victimized, Petro del Barrio refutes the notion of the idyllic portrayal of the fuenteovejuneros. She believes the absence of references to nature would have contributed to a metaphoric and idealized conceptualization of the peasants. Although admitting Laurencia appears to refer to the theme of menosprecio de la corte y alabanza de la aldea, she concludes that Laurencia merely praises simple rustic food. Petro del Barrio also believes the peasants' Neoplatonic debate on love is a "tema que debía escapar a su conocimiento" (61), and "resulta demasiado metafísico para gente que … confiesa no saber leer" (61). That the peasants intend to consult the village priest to resolve these "pleitos triviales" (61) on love, but fail to consult legal authorities to mediate their grievances with the Comendador, seems inexplicable to Petro del Barrio, particularly because the minor character, Leonelo, the town's graduate from the University of Salamanca, is absent during the deliberations concerning the Comendador's abuses and could have apprised the villagers of legal recourses. These arguments attempt to illustrate that "los fuenteovejuneros han perpetrado acciones de las que antes habían acusado al odiado Comendador, acciones difíciles de disculpar desde el punto de vista moral, legal e incluso cristiano" (62). These examples extract Fuenteovejuna from the repeated elevation of the commoner in countless plays by Lope and show a curious distance from the tendency of the comedia to discard verisimilitude for the purpose of thematic unity.

Petro del Barrio's analysis of La Numancia follows a similar line of argumentation, but with greater validity, i.e., the vices of the victimizer, the Roman army, mirror those of the victimized, the besieged Numantines. The failure of every Numantine sacrifice points to the ire of their gods; as the priest says, "Cúrese luego la profunda llaga / del arraigado acostumbrado vicio" (70). Petro del Barrio argues that valid...