Few would refute the didactic nature of stained glass windows, paintings, and sculptures used in Spanish cathedrals during the Counter-Reformation. For hundreds of years the artistic renderings of biblical narratives and of Catholic dogmata had aided both the literate and illiterate alike to internalize the teachings of the Church. In contrast, the seemingly complex web of semiotic signs that form part of the aural and visual spectacle of the auto sacramental has understandably led some to question if such productions could have truly held much meaning for commoners with little formal education. However, as a theatrical genre, the auto sacramental does not deviate much from the literal meaning and allegorical symbolism of the more static art forms that adorn cathedral walls and altarpieces. The usage of ships, highwaymen, and courtroom trials represent some of the most prominent symbols utilized by playwrights to create a Counter-Reformatory drama that facilitated the audiences' ability to decode the plays' allegorical meaning. The repeated use of these semiotic signs allowed the culturally literate public in urban centers across Spain to draw upon their intertextual knowledge of such symbols to appreciate and understand these Corpus Christi performances. Modern readers less familiar with these semiotic signs and their meaning experience an additional handicap because of their inability to see the visual spectacle designed, if not as the primary didactic tool of the genre, then at least as an effective complement to the instructive dialogue that takes place between the different characters of the auto. In spite of these additional challenges that the modern reader faces, the auto sacramental offers some insight into sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain that cannot be found in the more secular genres of the time. The added effort to investigate and understand the missing links of intertextual knowledge open a window that offers a panorama of a largely unexplored landscape of early-modern, Spanish society.

Cette étude s’intéresse aux biographies de criminels, l’un des nombreux imprimés sur le crime qui se développent au cours de l’époque moderne en Angleterre et en France. Ces dernières sont travaillées par des tensions morale et politique. Elles revendiquent un dessein didactique tout en exploitant volontiers le sensationnel de leur sujet. De même, la représentation de criminels est équivoque politiquement. Plutôt que de faire des hors-la-loi des repoussoirs et de souligner la manière dont ils sont écrasés par le pouvoir qu’ils ont défié, les textes les glorifient souvent et construisent un panthéon du crime. Cette thèse propose de réévaluer les ambiguïtés idéologiques de ces textes au croisement des discours historique, journalistique et romanesque en prenant en considération certains traits de l’écriture moderne comme l’ambition morale généralisée ou le flottement de la distinction entre fait et fiction. Cette remise en perspective conduit à repenser les potentialités subversives de ces textes qui semblent en fait moins résider dans l’héroïsation des criminels que dans l’articulation entre leur parcours et des questions sociales et politiques spécifiques au temps. / This study focuses on criminal biographies, one of the much-printed forms of criminal literature which developed in the early modern England and France. These texts are marked by moral and political ambivalence. Despite their proclaimed prescriptive aims, they make the most of the very sensational topic of crime. Furthermore, the depiction of criminals is politically problematic. Instead of presenting them as bad examples, underlining the way they are defeated by the authority they defy, they are often romanticized and thus a crime pantheon is built. This study seeks to reassess the ideological ambiguities of criminal biographies, at the crossroads of historical, journalistic, and novelistic discourses, taking into account some features of early modern literature, notably the systematic moral purpose and the blurred distinction between fact and fiction. This change of perspective leads us to re-evaluate the biographies’ potential in transgressing. Rather than lying in the romanticization of the outlaws, these seem to lie in the way some texts link the outlaws’ lives with some social and political debates of the time.