Capturing the Pcaro in Words

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