Socio-legal reflection of arson supported by the analysis of various serial novels published in Spain during the 19th century

Abstract

The article wants to reflect on the conflicting relationship that Western society has had to fire since ancient times and deepen into the historical discipline of arson in the Hispanic context. This will allow to collect a set of social and legal elements that will be able to demonstrating how that legislation was not only intended to punish the arsonists, but was designed to stigmatize them socially; and the nineteenth-century society found in the incipient popular literature, and in its most commercial expression, the novelas de entrega or folletines, a new useful tool to achieve this primary objective, because the social stigmatization of these criminals worked as a deterrent.