This book examines the figures of pícaro and cortesano in Lazarillo de Tormes (1554, 1573), Lucas Gracián Dantisco’s Galateo español (ca. 1582), Mateo Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache (1599, 1604), and Baltasar Gracián’s El Criticón (1651, 1653, 1657). The analysis is centered on issues of identity. The purpose is to demonstrate the correspondence between both figures, previously considered antithetical to each other. The book is divided in an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion, a bibliography, and an index.

The introduction summarizes the existing critical opinions on the topic, the book’s contribution to current scholarship, the conceptualizations of early modern subjectivity formation, and the description of the theoretical approaches used. The study relies primarily on the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu, Norbert Elias’s The Court Society, and historians such as Feros, Elliot, and Domínguez Ortiz. Specifically, the analysis applies Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, “a system of dispositions” acquired through socialization that prescribes individual’s behavior while allowing for improvisations (6), and of cultural, economic, symbolic, and social capital. Ruan connects these concepts with the term caudal, recurrently used in the texts under study.

The first chapter examines how the expurgated Lazarillo, frequently published as an appendix to Galateo español at the beginning of the seventeenth century, supports the courtly identity that Galateo proposes. Ruan asserts that Galateo español “aids to the configuration and reinforcement” of a particular mode of social identity that demands the acquisition of status and prestige (symbolic capital) as well as strategic interpersonal associations (social capital) (24). The book of conduct was directed to a group of arriviste or aspiring courtiers — educated men, merchants, writers — who sought to secure a position among the dominant class and needed to appropriate the superior class’s codes of deportment and cultivate social connections for their own advancement. In the same way, López de Velasco’s expurgated version of Lazarillo (1573), which underscores the squire episode, “addresses the preoccupations of the world of the court. .. that is, issues of identity, status, patronage and social mobility” (35). The analysis of the topics of medro, privanza, apprenticeship in strategies through master-disciple relationships, and acquisition of caudal, or capital, from the perspective of the concepts of habitus (Bourdieu) and of representational identity (Elias), substantiates Ruan’s arguments.

The second chapter explores Guzmán de Alfarache as “pícaro cortesano.” From the perspective of Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capital, and Elias’s idea of “courtly rationality,” Ruan proposes that the cognitive and cultural structures of the court (habitus) create similar predispositions and ways of acting and socializing for the pícaro and the courtier. The discussion is centered on the meaning of the word caudal and is supported by the analysis of the episodes of the pícaro at the service of the captain in part 1, and at the service of the French Ambassador in Rome in part 2.

In chapter three, Ruan adds the concept of gusto, or taste, to the ideas of caudal, habitus, and symbolic capital, to explain Gracián’s creation of the “cortesano pícaro” in El Criticón. The chapter explores the “nature of social relations” and the symbolic system that defines distinction and identity. As products of a performative courtly habitus the author argues that both pícaro and cortesano share a behavior modality: “a prudent ethics of accommodation” (146) and “struggle for the capital at stake” (147).

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. The disadvantage of this regularity is redundancy and narrowness. The textual analysis is limited and overlooks important issues such as gender and social exclusion that play significant roles in the creation of the courtier, an early modern paradigm of masculinity. Otherwise, Pícaro and Cortesano is a very accomplished study that adds to our knowledge of canonical Spanish texts.