First-person narrative does not always fall under the genre of autobiography. In the centuries before the genre was defined, authors often patterned their personal narratives after prestigious discourses, such as hagiography, historiography, and the literary miscellany. Caballero noble desbaratado: Autobiografía e invención en el siglo XVI (Noble Knight Disrupted: Autobiography and Invention in the Sixteenth Century) analyses several first-person narratives from Spain and the conditions of their writing and reception. It focuses on the sixteenth-century Libro de la vida y costumbres (Book of Life and Customs) by Alonso Enríquez de Guzmán (1499-1547), the knight of the title.
One chapter looks at antecedents to the central work: the late fourteenth-century by Leonor López de Córdoba, who narrates difficult passages of her life; the Brief Summary of the Life and Deeds by Diego García de Paredes, who speaks of duels and battles as an object lesson in honor and courage for his son; and Cautiverio y trabajos Captivity and Travails by Diego Galán, a tale of captivity and flight in Muslim lands that constitutes an early example of fictionalised autobiography. The study also examines the influence of writers like Bartolomé de Torres Naharro, Antonio de Guevara, and Pedro Mexía and the vitality of lyric poetry on both sides of the Atlantic.
Although the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles has devoted a volume to Enríquez de Guzmán, there has never been a book-length study dedicated to this author. This book fills that gap and constitutes a valuable contribution to the study of autobiography in Spanish.
