Capturing the Pícaro in Words: Literary and Institutional Representations of Marginal Communities in Early Modern Madrid (Outlaws in Literature, History, and Culture)

Capturing the Pícaro in Words discusses the framing of the transient marginals of early modern Madrid in the literary pícaro. It compares the perceptions of constables, shopkeepers, and criminals, to those of mass-produced literary representations, and argues that the literary representations "displaced" the pícaro, assigning the marginals different places in the literary texts in order to centralise the problem of urban vagrancy. The texts "spanished" the pícaro, thus establishing the image of a culturally homogenous group; and lastly, "silenced" the pícaro, under-representing the power marginals in the city derived from their knowledge of the information flows in the city. Cover 1 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Preface: Displacing, Spanishing and Silencing Madrid’s Pícaros 9 Acknowledgements 17 List of Abbreviations 18 Note on Translation and Transcription 19 Introduction: Madrid and the Picaresque Novel 20 1 Displacing the Pícaro 50 2 Spanishing the Pícaro 98 3 Silencing the Pícaro 141 Bibliography 187 Index 206 Capturing the Pícaro in Words discusses the framing of the transient marginals of early modern Madrid in the literary pícaro. Juxtaposing the perceptions of constables, shopkeepers and criminals to key literary representations, it reveals the displacement, cultural homogenization, and disenfranchisement produced by the picaresque novel. Capturing the Picaro in Words discusses the framing of the transient marginals of early modern Madrid in the literary picaro. Juxtaposing the perceptions of constables, shopkeepers and criminals to key literary representations, it reveals the displacement, cultural homogenization, and disenfranchisement produced by the picaresque novel.