Justice, Blindfolded: Law and Crime in the Celestina

Abstract

La Celestina is a breakthrough in the development of Spanish narratives from educa-tional purposes towards multi-layered literary worlds and thus crucial for the interac-tion between casuistry and imaginative literature. The plot’s casualties are framed by soliloquies referring to legal and ethical questions. On a rhetorical level, law is present in the master trope of blind(folded) justice. Combining a close reading of these soliloquies with contemporaneous casuistical writings and an iconological search for evidences elucidates the intention of this contested masterpiece.