Victor Sales PINHEIRO; Ayrton Borges MACHADO

Original title: Fuente Ovejuna (1619) de Lope de Vega (1562-1635): a ofensa moral do corpo como quebra dos ritos e vitalidade social

Published in Rhythms, expressions and representations of the body

Keywords: Barroque Literature, J. M. Bernstein, Lope de Vega, Moral Injury, Recognition.

This article proposes a study of the conception of moral injury in the baroque thought of Lope de Vega, based on the analysis of his work Fuente Ovejuna, in which one explores the Lope’s reflection on a local tyrant who disrespects and violates the citizens of Fuente Ovejuna, from the verbal insult, disdain for gifts, breach of rites, culminating in the rape of Laurencia. The study proposes to carry out a fusion of horizons, searching how much the Lope’s social thought regarding moral and social offense can contribute to the reflection on the social process of recognition, that is, how in a society its members manage to recognize themselves as peers, who respect and include each other. Therefore, the dialogue carried out takes place between the Lope’s thought extracted from Fuente Ovejuna and the theory of recognition by J. M. Bernstein. In the first topic, comedy is analyzed as a study of customs, emphasizing how much the dramaturgical tradition has been not merely fictional, but an investigation about morals, politics, and psychology, by its writers, so that Lope can appear as a thinker in this article. In the second topic, a narrative of Fuente Ovejuna is made, to form an understanding of the object. In the third topic, an analysis of various parts of Lope’s work is carried out, in which violations, disrespect and the breaking of ties and rites that imply damage to social self-understanding and vitality of themselves are perceived. The fourth topic presents first step of the core of the analysis, that is, how Lope explains the paradigm shifts to delve into the change in the understanding of moral offense, moving from honour to dignity, from morality to the body, and from man to the figure of the offended woman. In the fifth topic, having formed Lope’s social understanding in Fuente Ovejuna, a dialogue is carried out between this and Bernstein’s theory of recognition, to make explicit the contributions of Lope’s thought to the understanding of moral formation and recognition.