The purpose of this research is to examine the theme of criminal justice in Spanish literature, particularly in regard to the treatment of women, with an emphasis on Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de Vega. The plan of the research will be to set forth the pattern of ideas that emerge in the action of the play and then to discuss how these ideas articulate an attitude toward the phenomenon and enactment of criminal justice and the social position and role of women in Spain, past and present.
Based on fact, Fuente Ovejuna is set in fifteenth-century provincial Spain, at the moment of history (1476) when the Spanish monarchy was in the sixth year of consolidating its government institutions under Ferdinand of Castile and Isabella of Aragon. In the background of this project were several centuries of war among various feudal kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula. When James II came to power in Aragon in 1391, Aragon began to assume a kind of hegemony over all of Spain, "either by aiding the monarchs of Castile [militarily] . . . or by taking advantage of that kingdom's frequent internal difficulties to force it to cede portions of frontier territory" (Vincens Vives, 1970, p. 62).
At the same time, Aragon added other Mediterranean feudatories to its control and also engaged in a few crusades against the Muslims. Some domestic upheaval of the Aragonese and Catalan populations occurred in the process, but Vicens Vives (1970) attributes the continued strength of Aragon to an ever-present commercial class and a growing "urban patriciate" (p. 64). Contrast this with the Castilian predilection for material luxuries for the wealthy, which resulted in continued inflation and control of the internal Castilian economy by foreign interests.
The point is that in economic as well as political matters, in domestic as well as foreign policy, the Aragonese appear to have been distinguished by the kind of flexibility that fosters the institutionalization of ...