SOURCE: Eoff, Sherman. “The Picaresque Psychology of Guzmán de Alfarache.” Hispanic Review 21, no. 2 (April 1953): 107-19.

In the following essay, Eoff examines the psychology of the protagonist of Guzmán de Alfarache, dividing the story into sections which portray the protagonist's increasing shamelessness, deceit, and buffoonery.

What is the psychology of a pícaro? Can we profit by study the varieties of this literary type as we would individual human beings enmeshed in their environment? There is general agreement that the Spanish picaresque novel of the seventeenth century, more than a special kind of narrative form growing out of literary antecedents, is the expression of an attitude substantially determined by social, moral, and economic conditions of the age in which it flourished. What has been said on the subject, however, has to do largely with the mass psychology of la picardía as an indication of national consciousness...