Dangerfield's picaresqueDon tomazo: English novelists as Spanish (Anti-)heroes

Abstract

In late seventeenth-century England Thomas Dangerfield took the Spanishpicaro as a role model in his effort, through literary self-portratiure, to gain acceptance and standing for his criminal life style. Calling himself a new and larger-than-life version of Guzman de Alfarache, he employed the picaresque strategy of professing repentance for social and religious deviance while simultaneously plunging the reader into fantasies of delightful self-indulgence. Although critics of theGuzman are divided on the question of whether the rogue's protestations of contrition are to be taken ironically, in Dangerfield's case a more pronounced self-glorification makes it clear that the reader is invited to redefine moral values. Just as inLazarillo de Tormes andDon Quixote, an author who is a social outsider calls for readers to think for themselves, thus pointing the way toward the modern novel.