Little Devils and Satire in Vélez de Guevara’s El diablo cojuelo and Goethe’s Faust

Abstract

Besides the other sources that Goethe used when creating his Faust, in his private texts the author mentions his admiration for Le Diable Boiteux by Alain-René Le Sage. An eighteenth century French translation of El diablo cojeulo by Vélez de Guevara, it was extremely popular in its times. The article compares certain elements in the two works such as the objects satirized in the texts, the use of the ‘esperpento’, amongst other elements.