La niña de los embustes, entre Salas Barbadillo y Castillo Solórzano

Abstract

In the Spanish Golden Age, literature generally gathers and incorporates folk material. This including the traditional lyric, proverbs and a particular pliego suelto. The tradition associated with this femenine character –a playful and seductive girl– is used by Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo on his short novels El escarmiento del viejo verde and La niña de los embustes (both incluided in Corrección de vicios, 1615). This last text is the immediate precedent of La niña de los embustes, Teresa de Manzanares (1632), a picaresque novel by Alonso de Castillo Solórzano, recognized as the highest quality literature involving Teresa. From the traditional lyric to the picaresque novel, Teresa, developed by poets both anonymous and famous and then by Salas Barbadillo and finally by Castillo Solórzano, is clearly a well-known character, similar to others like Pedro de Urdemalas or Escarramán.