Wrongdoing in Spain 1800-1936: Realities, representations, reactions

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This project proposes a critical examination of concepts of wrongdoing in Spain from the start of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Taking a broad chronological sweep across a geographically and culturally contained area this project allows for concentration on specific areas of conceptualization. Within those confines, however, the project will take a broad, even a catholic, approach to wrongdoing. Thus it will encompass on the one hand a formal spectrum ranging from acts forbidden by the law (whether national or local), through acts forbidden by the Church (and conveyed through encyclicals, catechisms and sermons), to more philosophical questions of responsibility and agency, and on the other more popular attitudes to wrongdoing (conveyed characteristically through ephemeral publications). The term 'wrongdoing' is used to encompass a broad range. It is more than what is found to be criminal by legislation, and covers what is 'morally unjust, unfair, amiss or improper; the opposite or right or justice; the negation of equity, goodness or rectitude' (OED). Wrongdoing suggests actions, perpetrators, and a spectrum of intention or awareness. It is a profoundly moral concept, the arbiters of which may come from a variety of disciplines, as well as referring to wrongs covered by the law. Rather than a historical or sociological account of wrongdoing and its vicissitudes in Spain the intention of the project is to explore society's understanding of wrongdoing, and the way that this is translated into the world of culture. It is thus concerned not just with wrongdoing, but with the social and cultural responses it elicits. Such responses include anxiety, anger, desire for retribution, identification with perpetrators or victims of wrongdoing, the potential for vicarious engagement with wrongdoing through cultural artefacts. It allows for questioning of the processes through which it is evident that we, as cultural consumers, take a type of pleasure in wrongdoing. The evident public fascination with it can be traced from medieval ballad through to nineteenth-century broadsides, and eventually to sensationalist literary or visual representations of wrongdoing in our day.While clearly related to a specific place and period, the questions raised for examination in the project have clear relevance for understanding modern culture, where wrongdoing persists, and where our fascination with it continues. The project thus provides a safe space within which sensitive issues that provoke reactions such as hostility, excitement and horror can be examined. Crossing a variety of disciplines, it engages with wrongdoing as a complex cultural phenomenon, a cultural object for consumption as well as a profound and vital concept for society.A key part of the project, related to its emphasis on popular material, is the cataloguing and digitization of a significant body of popular material held at the University Library, Cambridge, and the British Library. This material is of 'pliegos sueltos' (chapbooks) and is an ephemeral genre, frequently sensationalist, and habitually sold in the street. It includes ballads and prose writings on wrongdoing, some of them relating to real acts of crime or moral infraction, others being fictional in nature. This body of material offers a rich source of investigation for the project, and will be read in conjunction with other material (newspaper accounts of crime, judicial proceedings on the one hand, and fictional works on wrongdoing to be found in both popular culture and elite culture). The digitization of the 'pliegos sueltos' will be a significant contribution to the stewardship, conservation and enhanced accessibility of a body of cultural material which has its counterparts in English, and which allow the research to take place in a broader academic and cultural material which has its counterparts in English, and which allows the research to take place in a broader academic and cultural context.