SOURCE: Johnson, Carroll. “D. Álvaro de Luna and the Problem of Impotence in Guzmán de Alfarache.” Journal of Hispanic Philology 8, no. 1 (Fall 1983): 33-47.

In the following essay, Johnson discusses themes of impotence in Guzmán de Alfarache.

It is customary to consider the interpolated novelettes in Guzmán de Alfarache either as more or less light-hearted entertainment and demonstrations of the author's virtuosity in several narrative conventions, or on the other hand as proof of Alemán's inability to free himself from his pessimistic world view, his preoccupation with frustration and deceit. In the first instance the critic finds himself forced to discover and call attention to a brighter side of Dorido's brutal murder of Oracio (I, iii, 10), and in the second he finds himself insisting that the well-intentioned deceptions of Ozmín and Daraja (I, i, 8) are examples of the rankest perfidy. Rather than attempt to...