SOURCE: Kaler, Anne K. “Literary Origins of the Picaro and the Picara.” In Picara: From Hera to Fantasy Heroine, pp. 21-41. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Press, 1991.

In this excerpt, Kaler discusses the early picaras in Spanish literature, focusing on their autonomy.

Imagine that, after all the primary colors that the picaro left us are blended into crude figures, the artist introduces a true blinding white which is laid on top of all the other shades to highlight prominent points.

Autonomy is such a white—a brighter, larger, obtrusive, awkward, unpredictable, crystalline, visible, shattering white. For it is around and about and in and through her autonomy that the picara takes her distinctive literary form, separate from the subdued shades of earlier literary forms. If her autonomy clarifies her picaresque traits, autonomy also magnifies the shapes and colors of the earlier picaresque forms. Asserting that her...