The Performance of Justice: Good Natured Rule Breaking in Calderón's 'El Alcalde de Zalamea'

This essay argues that the existence of a written canon of legal precedents concerning the rape of lower class women by nobles (Barahona), framed by a confusing matrix of competing juridical procedures and rituals (Susan Byrne), offers Calderon the opportunity to reimagine juridical practices and the role of the letrado in their interpretation and use. As such, Pedro Crespo may be viewed as Calderon’s authorial avatar, one who models a witty mimetic praxis in the interest of creating a legitimate social and, more importantly, juridical space for his peasant family. This enterprise—empresa, in emblematic terms—is, in turn, analogous to efforts by early modern writers and painters to assemble honourable occupations out of what traditionally were considered to be artisanal activities. My primary theoretical tools for carrying out this analysis are Catherine Bell’s notions of ritual agency and redemptive hegemony, which provide useful concepts for identifying and analyzing Calderon’s authorial performance and its aesthetic and historical implications. The paper ends with a reflection on the implications of this reading for current debates concerning Jose Antonio Maravall’s notion of baroque guided culture.