The Law in Cervantes and Shakespeare

María José Falcón y Tella is Professor of Legal Philosophy (1991) of the Complutense University of Madrid. She is the author of 30 books, many of them translated into different languages. The English-language versions of Civil Disobedience (2004), Punishment and Culture (2006), Equity and Law (2008), A Three-Dimensional Theory of Law (2010), Jurisprudence in Roman, Anglosaxon and Continental Law (2011), Justice and Law (2014), Law and Literature (2016) and Challenges to Legal Theory. Essays in Honour of Professor José Iturmendi Morales (2021), were published with Brill/Nijhoff. She was awarded the “National Prize of Studies in Law” in 1987.

Foreword


1 Introduction


2 The Law in Literature


3 Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

 3.1 Historical Background


 3.2 Life


 3.3 The Omnipresence of Legal Themes in Cervantes’s Works




4 Don Quixote of La Mancha

 4.1 General Observations on the Work


 4.2 Law and Literature in Don Quixote


 4.3 The Sanchification of Don Quixote and the Quixotization of Sancho


 4.4 Don Quixote, a Left-Wing Democrat


 4.5 The Character of Dulcinea del Toboso


 4.6 Significance of the Curate’s Character in Don Quixote


 4.7 The Quixotism of Christopher Columbus


 4.8 A “Golden Age Speech” with Communist Undertones


 4.9 Defense of Nationalities and Languages


 4.10 Knights-errant According to Don Quixote


 4.11 Individual Rights and Freedoms in Don Quixote

 A General Observations


 B The Question of Cervantes and Human Rights


 C Honor


 D Women in Don Quixote


 E The Right to Freedom of Thought: General Observations


 F Jews and New Christians: Antisemitism and Blood Purity


 G Moors and Moriscos. The Basque and Indiano Cases


 H Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft


 I Censorship

 a Censorship “in” the Work


 b Censorship “of” the Work




 J The Inquisition


 K Elder Law




 4.12 War and Peace

 A Is War Ever Just?

 a General Observations on Just War Theory


 b Was the War in Iraq a Just War?


 c Evolution of the Concept of Just War After 9/11




 B War in Don Quixote




 4.13 Monarchy, States, and Republic


 4.14 On Government and the Administration of Justice

 A Proverbs


 B The Government of the Island of Barataria


 C The Episode of the Galley Slaves


 D Arbitration




 4.15 Criminal Law

 A General Observations


 B Aggravating and Mitigating Factors in the Novel


 C Specific Crimes Mentioned in the Novel


 D Don Quixote’s View of Delinquents


 E Toward a More Humane Criminal Law: The Privatization of Criminal Law

 a Historical Background


 b Comparative Law


 c Restorative Justice and Probation in Criminal Law


 d Repairing Harm: Toward a Conciliatory System


 e What If We Did Away with Punishment?


 f Handling Conflict as an Inevitability


 g Resocializing Society to Make It Less Unjust Rather than Resocializing the Individual


 h The Perfection of Criminal Law


 i Dealing with a Complex Interdisciplinary Problem




 4.16 Civil Law

 A General Observations


 B The Last Will and Testament of Alonso Quixano


 C Marriage in Don Quixote


 D Civil Tort Law




 4.17 Labor Law

 A General Observations


 B The Remunerative Relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho: Wages or Rewards?




 4.18 Commercial Law

 A The Business Activity of Inns from the Perspective of the Accommodation Contract


 B The “Ass-Colt Order” as a Glimpse of the Law of Negotiable Instruments




 4.19 Tax Law


 4.20 Procedural Law


 4.21 Aristocratic Law


 4.22 Madness in Don Quixote


 4.23 Values in the Work

 A Freedom


 B Equality


 C Justice




 4.24 Love in Don Quixote


 4.25 Legal Material: Sources of Law


 4.26 The Geopoetic Landscape




5 William Shakespeare

 5.1 Life

 A Relevant Legal Aspects of Shakespeare’s Life


 B Correlations between the Life and Work of Cervantes and Shakespeare




 5.2 Work

 A King Lear

 a Legal Aspects of the Work


 b Madness in King Lear




 B The Merchant of Venice

 a Legal Aspects of the Work


 b Similarities to Don Quixote




 C Hamlet

 a Legal Aspects of Hamlet


 b Madness in Hamlet


 c Comparison of the Characters of Don Quixote and Hamlet: Soulmates?





Bibliography


Index