Repenting Roguery: Penance in the Spanish Picaresque Novel and the Arabic and Hebrew Maqama

Abstract

Repenting Roguery: Penance in the Spanish Picaresque Novel and the Arabic and Hebrew Maqāma, investigates the significance of conversion narratives and penitential elements in the Spanish picaresque novels Vida de Guzmán de Alfarache (1599 and 1604) by Mateo Alemán and El guitón Onofre (circa 1606) by Gregorio González as well as Juan Ruiz’s Libro de buen amor (1330 and 1343) and El lazarillo de Tormes (1554), the Arabic maqāmāt of al-Ḥarīrī of Basra (circa 1100), and Ibn al-Ashtarkūwī al-Saraqusṭī (1126-1138), and the Hebrew maqāmāt of Yehudah al-Ḥarizi (circa 1220) and Isaac Ibn Sahula (1281-1284). In exploring the ways in which Christian, Muslim, and Jewish authors from medieval and early modern Iberia represent the repentance of a rogue, my study not only sheds light on the important commonalities that these religious and literary traditions share, but also illuminates the particular questions that these picaresque and proto-picaresque texts raise within their respective religious, political and cultural milieux. The ambiguity that characterizes the conversion narrative of a seemingly irredeemable rogue, I argue, provides these medieval and early modern writers with an ideal framework to address pressing problems such as controversies regarding free will and predestination, the legitimacy of claims to religious and political authority, and the understanding of social and religious marginality.