In This Ground-Breaking Study, Professor Anne J. Cruz Examines The treatment of poverty, prostitution, war, and other Social concerns in the cultural and literary discourses of Early Modern Spain. This book investigates the polemics on poor relief through religious charity and secularized reform articulated not only in the Spanish picaresque canon -- Lazarillo de Tormes, Guzman de Alfarache, El buscon, but in female picaresque narratives and soldiers tales. Emphasizing Bakhtins notion that discursive practices must be assessed as they intersect and become textualized in history, the book conjoins this literature with normative writings such as royal decrees, regulations, economic proposals, synods, and sermons. Through these discourses, authors and authorities alike debated their theories of poor assistance for both men and women, from the critique of unregulated prostitution in works like La lozana andaluza to the control of impoverished youths through military conscription as in the Vida de Alonso de Contreras and Estebanillo Gonzalez. Precipitated by the rupture of the feudal system and the economic devastation of the country, the spiralling numbers of poor were increasingly perceived as delinquents by an anxious populace. The book employs Foucaults paradigms of confinement and control to study the various suggestions for the social containment of Spains marginalized elements. Positing that the literary picaros and picaras assume the role of scapegoats for this disen-franchised social Other, Professor Cruz further argues that the picaresque novels respond dialectically to the growing demonization of the poor in Early Modern Spanish culture.