"Picaresque Tales" - parodic narratives relating the adventures of a rogue - have been central to the development of Spanish literature. This text addresses the connection between literary representation and everyday life, examining the context in which the Picaresque mode developed.

Introduction: Renaissance marginalities, Giancarlo Maiorino; Picaresque econopoetics: At the watershed of living standards, Giancarlo Maiorino; "Otras cosillas que no digo": Lazarillo's dirty sex, George A. Shipley; Picturing the picaresque: Lazarillo and Murillo's Four figures on a step, Janis A. Tomlinson and Marcia L. Welles; The author's author, typography, and sex: The fourteenth mamotreto of La Lozana andaluza, Luis Beltran; Breaking the barriers: The birth of Lopez de Ubeda's Picara Justina, Nina Cox Davis; Defining the picaresque: Authority and the subject in Guzman de Alfarache, Carroll B. Johnson; Trials of discourse: Narrative space in Quevedo's Buscon, Edward H. Freidman; Picaresque elements in Cervantes's works, Manuel Duran; Sonnes of the rogue: Picaresque relations in England and Spain, Anne J. Cruz; The protean picaresque, Howard Mancing; Afterword: Revisiting the picaresque in postmodern times, Francisco J. Sanchez and Nicholas Spadaccini.