SOURCE: Smith, Hilary S. D. “The Pícaro Turns Preacher: Guzmán's de Alfarache's Missed Vocation.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 14, no. 4 (October 1978): 387-97.

In the following essay, Smith examines the sermons in Guzmán de Alfarache, concentrating on Guzmán's role as a preacher.

It must become apparent to even the most casual reader of Mateo Alemán's picaresque novel Guzmán de Alfarache that the work is full of sermons; that not only the digressive discursos (a favourite term applied to contemporary printed sermons) but also complete chapters are cast in a homiletic mould.¹ Whereas Unamuno expressed his dislike for this novel by calling it “una sarta de sermones enfadosos y pedestres de la más ramplona filosofía y de la exposición más difusa y adormiladora que cabe”,² Herrero García was not being intentionally disparaging when he defined the picaresque novel in...