This section contains 9,277 words (approx. 31 pages at 300 words per page) |
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SOURCE: Norval, M. N. “Original Sin and the ‘Conversion’ in the Guzmán de Alfarache.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 51, no. 4 (October 1974): 346-64.
In the following essay, Norval argues against critics such as Alexander Parker and Moreno Báez who claim that Guzmán's final conversion is real, charging instead that Guzmán de Alfarache is a pessimistic story about man's inability to gain salvation without God's grace.
The Guzmán de Alfarache is a pseudo-autobiography in which a pícaro tells the story of his evil life and his supposed conversion.1 More critics than not have dismissed the conversion as hypocritical, as Alexander Parker has pointed out,2 but the prevailing critical view at present accepts it as genuine.3 This view, expounded primarily by Moreno Báez and Alexander Parker, takes Guzmán's tale at face value, and sees the novel as a working-out of orthodox Catholic doctrines concerning...
This section contains 9,277 words (approx. 31 pages at 300 words per page) |
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