Francisco Delicado's Portrait of Lozana: The Lusty Andalusian Woman describes a community of Spanish Jewish conversos who flee from the Inquisition and settle in Rome, Italy, during the first third of the 16th century. A surprisingly modern novel which uses colloquial street language novel to provide a vivid description of a lower class Roman neighborhood as seen by Spanish immigrants at the bottom of the social hierarchy.The central character is a woman, beautiful, witty, rootless and itinerant, who attempts to live independently in Rome. We learn her story through her dialogues with an array of characters, each one with a very individual voice, that create a sense of immersion in a 16th century Roman neighborhood. The "Auctor" engages actively in the text with his characters, even discussing the process of writing, foreshadowing the works of Miguel de Cervantes. This classic text is a striking prefiguration of the modern novel, with its polyphonic voices, metafiction, and the extraordinary interaction of the Auctor with his characters.
Prof. Tatiana Bubnova, of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, based the edition on the original (Venice, c.1530 ) at the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, and the facsimile edition by Antonio Perez Gomez (Valencia, 1950). The text without modernization allows students to become familiar with the 16th century Spanish book. The critical apparatus takes into account the ideas of former editors and provides extensive documentation and explanation of sources, sayings, proverbs, quotes and idiomatic expressions, introducing readers in the many dimensions of this engaging novel.