The rhetoric of legal writing and its judicial-literary impact: considerations on the influence of notarial rhetoric in Golden Age narrative

Abstract

This text analyzes the influence of rhetoric on legal writing during the early modern period, closely linking the legal and literary fields, thus embracing the studies developed within the «Law and Literature Movement». From an interdisciplinary perspective, it begins with the ars notaria and the work performed by scribes in situating truth within legal discourse and better aligning it with reality. In New Spain, this tradition developed gradually and was consolidated with Nicolás de Yrolo Calar’s Primera Parte de Política de Escrituras (1605), considered the first legal form, which promoted the bureaucratic culture and the lettered city described by Ángel Rama. Official writing shaped, in many ways, the urban and social order. Furthermore, the production of manuals and forms gave rise to legal practices and styles that are still prevalent today. In the literary field, Roberto González Echevarría proposed in Myth and archive (1998) that this notarial writing influenced Latin American narrative, a hypothesis that will be tested in this paper. To this end, the final section of the text analyzes, as an example, how some parts of notarial discourse are used in some texts from Golden Age literature.