ALEMÁN, MATEO

ALEMÁN, MATEO (1547–c. 1615), Spanish novelist of "New Christian" descent. He studied medicine at Salamanca and Alcalá. Always poverty-stricken, he was several times imprisoned for debt. conversos were forbidden to leave Spain, but Alemán secured permission by means of a bribe and arrived in the New World in 1608. Alemán's fame rests on one great work, the Guzman de Alfarache, the first part of which was published in 1599, the second in 1604. This is a picaresque novel marked by a skillful fusion of narrative and didactic elements. The picaresque genre was introduced in 1554 with an anonymous work called La vida de Lazarus de Tormes …. The bitterness expressed in the novel has been ascribed to its author's position as a Converso, one of whose ancestors was burned in an auto-da-fé, while some have suggested that it may merely reflect Alemán's personal disillusionment. In the novel Alemán contrasts the nobility that has possessions and power with the "ignobility" that lacks lineage and respectability. He died in Mexico. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Valbuena Prat, La Novela Picaresca Española (19462), 46–59. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: R. Bjornson, The Picaresque Hero in European Fiction (1977), 43–65; C.B. Johnson, Inside Guzmán de Alfarache (1978); B. Brancaforte, Guzmán de Alfarache: Conversión o proceso de degradación? (1980); M. Cavillac, Gueux et marchands dans le Guzmán de Alfarache … (1983); M. Molho, in: REJ, 144 (1985), 71–80; C. Guillén, in: El primer siglo de oro …. (1988), 177–96. (Kenneth R. Scholberg / Yom Tov Assis (2nd ed.)