Discourses of Poverty

Abstract

In this thought-provoking, comprehensive, well-researched and wellwritten book, Anne J. Cruz studies the divergent discourses that emerged in early modern Spain in response to increasing numbers of marginalized poor, equally focusing on fictional (picaresque) and non-fictional texts, on literary and extra-literary sources. The use of Foucauldian social paradigms allows Cruz to move not only beyond formalist parameters but also beyond strict sociological and moralist approaches as she views the picaresque's dialectical engagement with the multiple conditions that generated its appearance. In Cruz's own words, by analyzing the narratives as "cultural discourses rather than solely literary artifacts" she is able "to foreground the pressing questions of poverty, delinquency, vagrancy, and prostitution embedded in the novels" (xiii). Following along parallel lines the development of the genre and the evolution of the country, Cruz concludes that the end of the picaresque coincides with the decline of Hapsburg Imperial rule and that the "last"picaresque novel-Estebanillo González-"records both failed history and the failure of history" (xvii). Each chapter contains three sections that integrate penetrating discussions of specific literary texts (picaresque novels) with assessments of other documents and issues relevant to the book's main topic: poverty and social reform. Chapter 1 discusses Lazarillo as a tale that explores the relationship between society and its poor, in this case the growing numbers of vagabonds and beggars who invaded the emerging urban centers in sixteenth-century Spain and led to an increase in criminality as well as the "later conflation of the poor with the delinquent" (5). In the section entitled "Lepers and Liminality" Cruz states that, as the number of lepers began to dwindle at the end of the Middle Ages, their traditional role as "other" was taken by marginal groups-conversos, moriscos, loose women, pícaros, that is to say, the disenfranchised and dispossessed. The unrelenting poverty and persistent hunger that mark Lazarillo's narrative and contribute to its structural cohesion

Valuing Literature: The Picaresque and the Writing Life in Mexico

“…However, it is safe to assert that, over time, the following studies have been considered classics on the subject: Fernando Lázaro Carreter (1970); Anne J. Cruz (1999); José Antonio Maravall (1986); Maurice Molho (1972); Ulrich Wicks (1974); and Claudio Guillén (1977). Studies specifically addressing the Mexican picaresque are scarce: Timothy G. Compton's (1997) Mexican Picaresque Narratives offers a survey from colonial times to the twentieth century, as does Carol Blackburn's (1969) unpublished PhD dissertation.…”