An Early Bourgeois Literature in Golden Age Spain: Lazarillo de Tormes, Guzmán de Alfarache and Baltasar Gracián

Tracing the beginnings of a bourgeois literature in Golden Age Spain, Francisco Sanchez examines works by Baltasar Gracian (1601-1658), major picaresque texts--particularly Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) and Mateo Aleman's Guzman de Alfarache (1599-1604)--and contemporary writings in which political economists and jurists look at new economic and political circumstances.

Using the term republica to describe an economic sphere of social life under the constrictions of both the monarchy and the privileges of the seignorial system, Sanchez investigates notions of person, culture, and life in these texts. He also analyzes the formation of a private sphere of social action and the emergence of a literary sphere to represent early bourgeois values and sensibilities. Sanchez argues that this literature represents culture as intellectual and verbal skills for the social and economic advancement of a Christian but secularized person.

Author: Francisco J. Sánchez
Publisher: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill D
Published: 12/15/2003
Pages: 164
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.68lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.04w x 0.56d
ISBN: 9780807892800

About the Author
Sánchez, Francisco J.: - Francisco J. Sanchez is associate professor of Spanish literature at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.