Capturing the P�caro in Words: Literary and Institutional Representations of Marginal Communities in Early Modern Madrid

Capturing the P�caro in Words discusses the framing of the transient marginals of early modern Madrid in the literary p�caro. It compares the perceptions of constables, shopkeepers, and criminals, to those of mass-produced literary representations, and argues that the literary representations "displaced" the p�caro, assigning the marginals different places in the literary texts in order to centralise the problem of urban vagrancy. The texts "spanished" the p�caro, thus establishing the image of a culturally homogenous group; and lastly, "silenced" the p�caro, under-representing the power marginals in the city derived from their knowledge of the information flows in the city.