SOURCE: Davis, Nina Cox. “Guzmán('s) Swindles.” Symposium 43, no. 3 (Fall 1989): 194-208.

In the following essay, Davis argues that the stories of how Guzmán swindles a silversmith, a merchant, and his uncle offer clues to the Guzmán's greatest deception of all—deceiving readers into believing his final conversion is authentic.

Since its publication in 1599, Guzmán de Alfarache has been the subject of controversy, and its critics remain divided today. They debate Alemán's message, agreeing only that the novel is structured on a complex and problematic narrative. The fictive author Guzmán is made to relate his past and comment on it for the readers' edification, but the intricate shifts in his account between diegesis and mimesis often obscure both his reasoning and its relationship to episodes in the plot.¹ Moreno Báez and other scholars have attempted to clarify this contrapuntal narration by arguing...