The Newgate effect

The recovery of the memory of those sent to the gallows in En el último azul and Por el cielo y más allá by Carme Riera

Abstract

Amongst the European corpus of dying speeches, the Newgate Calendars are paramount due to their popularity since the seventeenth century. Originally thought of as a narration with a moralistic tone to validate the status quo, it soon became a mass phenomenon. In the nineteenth century, the role of Destiny and the conception of crime as a sin is replaced by a break of the social contract and an attempt against private property. It is then published in verse to be sung for the masses and in prose for the high class. As a result, a new type of fiction is born; the Newgate Novel. One in which the criminal is portrayed as a hero. The goal of this article is to establish a comparison between En el último azul and Por el cielo y más allá and the process followed by the Newgate narrations between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. Beginning with the autos de fe of 1691 and continuing in the nineteenth century with the descendants of one of those burnt at the stake, the novels gradually depart from the religious discourse, problematize the veracity of the official texts and position themselves in favor of the accused.

Key Words: Carme Riera, dying speeches, Newgate Calendars, Newgate Novel, Destiny, gallows literature.