Pícaro and Cortesano

Identity and the Forms of Capital in Early Modern Spanish Picaresque Narrative and Courtesy Literature

Felipe E. Ruan

2011
167 pages
ISBN 9781611480504

In this book on the relationship between Pícaro and Cortesano, Felipe E. Ruan argues that these two cultural figures are linked by a shared form of deportment centered on prudent self-accommodation. This behavior is generated and governed by a courtly ethos or habitus, which emerges as the result of the growth and influence of the court in Madrid. Ruan posits that both Pícaro and Cortesano, and their respective books -- conduct manual and picaresque narrative -- tacitly engage questions of identity and individualism by highlighting the valued resources or forms of capital that come to fashion and sustain self-identity. He places the books of the Pícaro and Cortesano within the larger polemic of early modern identity and individualism, and offers an account of the individual as agent whose actions are grounded on objective social relations, without those actions being simply the result of mechanistic adherence to the social order.

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Reviews

"Pícaro and Cortesano es un ejercicio de investigación maduro y riguroso acerca de la construcción de la identidad social en medio de circunstancias cambiantes. Los textos elegidos para el análisis son los idóneos, tanto por su relevancia literaria como por el impacto editorial que tuvieron cuando se publicaron."

[Pícaro and Cortesano is a rigorous and mature research exercise on the construction of social identity in the context of changing circumstances. The texts selected for analysis are ideal, as much for their literary relevance as for their editorial impact when they were published.]
--- Juan Luis Suárez, Revista Hispánica Moderna 66:2 (2013): 238-239.

"This book presents a very organized, focused, and convincing analysis of the similar predispositions of the pícaro and the cortesano as a consequence of the culture of the Madrid court and the institution of privanza during the reigns of Philip III and IV. Throughout the study, the author consistently applies the same theoretical perspective, in conjunction with significant critical and historical studies, to efficiently demonstrate the common characteristics of these figures in the diverse texts analyzed."
--Encarnacion Juarez-Almendros,University of Notre Dame, in Renaissance Quarterly

"This is a solid study, informed by social theory and by the work of an eminent group of Hispanists. The operative juxtapositions are revealing and rewarding. By judiciously navigating similitude and difference, Ruan expands and enriches the parameters of social and literary history."
--Edward H. Friedman, Vanderbilt University, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 90: 6 (2013): 737-738.

About the author:

Felipe E. Ruan is Associate Professor of Spanish at Brock University.

Distributed by Bloomsbury (formerly by Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group)

eBook: 9781611480511