Picaresque fatherhood: racial and literary heritage in Guzmán de Alfarache 1.1

Abstract

This article is concerned with the portrait of the father of the most influential picaresque character to emerge from the satirical novel-writing tradition of early modern Spain, Guzman de Alfarache. In the first chapter of this classic narrative, the title character’s forbearer is portrayed in ways that harken back to the parodic representation of particular, high-profile conversos or converts to Christianity in the bestselling Cancioneros or songbooks that were published during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. At the same time, the depiction of Guzman’s hypocritical, bisexual, renegade father provides a telling example of how emerging categories and ideas of race were developed to explain and illustrate by what means traits and propensities could be passed on through the blood, in keeping with the idea of lineage in horse breeding. These notions and attendant images were at the same time being fictionalized and novelized in the Inquisitorial, polemical cultural environment that coincided with and directly impacted the life of the author of the novel, Mateo Aleman, as well as his ancestors.