GUZMAN DE ALFARACHE, da arfa ra-cha.

The earliest extensive novel of roguery is the Spanish

fiction 'Guzman de Alfa rache,> published in its first instalment in 1599, and, in its second, in 1605.
Mateo Aleman, the author, was a government official inspired by the success of an amusing story,
'Lazarillo de Tormes,> which had been issued anonymously in 1554. had set forth ironically the
adventures of a little rascal in the service of several masters, each of whom he tricks and satirizes.
Aleman, adopting this de vice, developed the character of the roguish hero and greatly widened his
field of adventure. Like Lazarillo, Guzman is a picaro of illegiti mate birth who describes with jaunty
humor his progress through the world as innkeeper's boy, mendicant, scullion, apothecary's appren
tice, mock gentleman, soldier and buffoon to a cardinal. He passes from Spain to Italy, lives among
the infamous beggars of Rome, and officiates as master of intrigues for the French ambassador in
that city. In the "Second Part" of the novel he wanders to Florence, Siena and Bologna, cheating and
being cheated, before returning to Spain, where various es capades lead to his confinement in the
galleys. The story concludes with his release, as a reward for having revealed a plot concocted by
-his fellow convicts. Before the appearance of

this "Second Part" a certain Juan Marti of Valencia, writing under the pseudonym Mateo Luxan de
Sayavedra, had issued a spurious sequel to Aleman's novel, carrying Guzman through a similar
picaresque Odyssey but chok ing the narrative with moral digressions. Ale man had moralized, also,
and provided roman tic relief from his ultra-realistic scenes by in serting serious or sentimental tales
in the Italian style; but it was his gift of humorous observation that rendered popular his work. A
contemporary affirms that by 1605, 26 editions had appeared. While thousands of copies were
circulating in Spain, 'Guzman de Alfarache> was translated into French, Italian, Germafi, English,
Dutch, and even Latin. No other Spanish fiction save 'Don Quixote' has exerted so wide an
influence. The English reader may consult the translations of James Mabbe (1622), A. O'Connor
(1812), J. H. Brady (1821), and E. Lowdell (1883), as well as discussions of this novel and its kind in
F. W. Chandler's 'Romances of Roguery' (1899) and F. De Haan's 'Outline of the History of the
Novela Picaresca in Spain> (1903)