SOURCE: Johnson, Carroll. Introduction to Inside Guzmán de Alfarache, pp. 1-9. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1978.

In the following essay, Johnson examines some of the many competing interpretations of Guzmán de Alfarache, himself concentrating on the discrepancies between Guzmán's adventures and Alemán's sermonizing.

The preeminence of Don Quijote in the history of the modern novel, while demonstrating a facet of the general debt of Western literature to the Hispanic tradition, has been largely responsible for the widespread ignorance or misunderstanding of the other great prose narration that stands together with the Quijote at the headwaters of “our” novel. That work is the picaresque Guzmán de Alfarache (1599 and 1604) by Cervantes's contemporary, Mateo Alemán. In its time Guzmán de Alfarache was the most popular and influential work of Spanish literature in existence, including Don Quijote. It was translated into the major languages...