Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

SPANISH PICARESQUE FICTION AS A PROBLEM OF GENRE

Author(s): Peter N. Dunn
Source: Dispositio, Vol. 15, No. 39, GENRE STUDIES IN HISPANIC LITERATURE (1990), pp. 1-
15
Published by: Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41491371
Accessed: 12-03-2017 22:05 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Dispositio

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Dispositio Vol. XV, No. 39, pp. 1-15
Department of Romance Languages, University of Michigan

SPANISH PICARESQUE FICTION AS A PROBLEM OF GENRE

Peter N. Dunn
Wesleyan University

In the last twenty years or so there has been a great surge of interest in
picaresque literature, both on the part of professional students of Spanish and
also on the part of readers who are interested in comparative literary studies.1
This interest has been enhanced by the preponderance in our time of narrative as
an object of study by theorists and by literary historians. For the historically-
minded scholar, the attraction of Spanish picaresque narratives is not particularly
surprising. These works have often been regarded as a highly sensitive mirror of
the social conditions and mode of life of the time in which they were written, and
this incorporation of material from the world of everyday has been seen as a
formal rejection of the mode of romance and thus as an important moment in the
institution of the modern novel.2 Not only scholars but novelists in the twentieth
century have helped to intensify this interest in Spanish picaresque, by writing
works to which the label picaresque can be attached. One might wish that genre
identification were a simple matter of truth in labelling, and that questions could
be referred to a bureau of standards. Unfortunately, such is not the case. The
generic identity of 'the Spanish picaresque novel', and the place accorded to it as
a sort of historic separator of novel from romance, remain open to question.
Genres, as we all know, are instruments not simply of classification or
prescription, but of meaning and interpretation. Historically and institutionally
they rest upon consensus. They mediate between writer and public by shaping a
common horizon of expectations which is rationalized as a set of consistency
criteria. To quote E.D. Hirsch on the relation of reading to generic expectation:

...in most cases our expectations are not baffled and defeated. We
found the types of meanings we expected to find because what we

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
2 PETER N. DUNN

found was in fact powerf

Thus, while it is not acc
hopelessly dependent on
interpreter happens to s
interpretation is depende
ception with which he star
is necessarily genre-bound

In other words, judgments

implicit assumptions about
genre will tend to favor this
circularity is not unfamiliar
to scholarly discussions o
ideological challenge that h
commentators since the ea
nineteenth century. Second,
of genre and of the meanin
largely unexamined. In this p
which the canonical works ar
violence that result from
devaluation of highly signifi
second is the distortion of th
as picaresque. On the one h
and on the other the ruptu
Discussion of picaresque
categories that recent literar
What is conveniently -
picaresque novel' is a numb
novellas, like Lazarillo de T
the immensely long and com
loosest and most inclusive c
more. They occupy a histo
Lazarillo de Tormes in 1554,
hiatus between Lazarillo and P
continuous creativity is less
first person, and this autobi
Many later ones, however, ar
are non-heroic; some strug
whereas others make good
money in the time-honored
The problem became visible
himself, left home. From So
and Le Sage's Gil Blas de Sa
from Grimmelshausen's Simp
Felix Krull ( 1 954) and Gunth

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 SPANISH PICARESQUE FICTION AS A PROBLEM OF GENRE 3

twentienth-century fiction, the progeny is immense, if the paternity

acknowledged. The epithet 'picaresque' has been applied so indiscriminatel
the last few decades by reviewers to any somewhat unscrupulous adventurer t
it has little definition. This problem of international critical hijacking
summed up by W.M. Frohock in 1969, in an article with the Yeatsian apocalyp
title "The Failing Centre", when he said that for every new novel there is a cr
waiting to find something picaresque in it.4
Can the term picaresque be used with greater precision? In 1895 the Dutch
scholar Fonger de Haan wrote a succinct description of picaresque narrativ
"the prose autobiography of a person, real or imaginary, who strives, by
means and by foul, to make a living, and in relating his experiences in var
classes of society, points out the evils which come under his observation."5 Th
components - struggle, observation, social criticism - the set has a familiar rin
and it vibrates in tune with much nineteenth-century judicial criticism, and w
that century's idea of what literature should present. The progress of Laza
and some later protagonists from master to master was interpreted as indicat
a novel of manners, and the portraits of the masters themselves constituted s
satire.6 (It was natural perhaps that the readers who had imbibed nineteen
century liberalism and who shared the Victorian faith in the civilizing
liberating power of humane letters should find themselves unable to contemp
representations of Catholic authoritarian Spain except as satire. The practic
re-encoding was not new; the medievais could come to terms with the scandalo
works of the pagan past only by re-encoding them as allegory. In a sceptical a
the process may be reversed; students who don't like the message of Dante ma
try to convince us that he was being ironic. That is, until they discover the ev
greater joys of deconstruction.)
The concept 'picaresque novel' in fact is constituted during the second half
of that century from a set of overlappping matrices: the absolute singularity
individuals; the necessary struggles of individuals for freedom within their so
bounds; the moral value of literature; and, on a lower level of generality,
decadence of Spanish society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Finall
a biological concept of the development of literature, which sometimes adopte
the model of the growth, maturity and decay of the individual organism, and
other times promoted an evolutionary progress. It is against the persistenc
these historical fictions that critics and literary historians have had to struggle
our century.
The rise of various types of formalist criticism in this century drew attent
away from the predominantly social and ideological concerns and towar
narrative devices and patterns; phenomenological and existentialist readin
have discovered the functioning of narrative time, the dual consciousness of t
narrator who makes himself the subject of his own narration.7 In the cas
Lazarillo de Tormes's three principal masters - the blind man, the priest and t
squire - they don't cease to represent a society emblematically in its three est
But by virtue of their presentation in Lzaro's first person narrative, they ar

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 4 PETER N. DUNN

unified also on an existen

Lazarillo the boy, but also t
the writer. So if in the early
Lzaro feeds back into the
radically, through his activity
reader's eyes, in the expec
Lazarillo de Tormes has become a text that ensnares the reader in its own
operations.
* * *

In the preceding pa
critical approaches, d
what we have come to
and processing of n
theory. And I want no
model for the picare
In 1961 Claudio Gui
Comparative Literatu
of the Picaresque." It
System (Princeton, 19
picaresque:
1) a picaresque genre;
2) a group of novels that (in his words) "deserve to be called picaresque in
the strict sense - usually in agreement with the original Spanish pattern;"
3) another group that can only be considered picaresque "in a broader sense
of the term;" and
4) a picaresque "myth": "an essential situation or structure derived from the
novels themselves." (p. 71)
These distinctions are not all that clear; but rather than spend time on them I
want to look at the second, that is to say, the "Spanish pattern". According to
Guilln, it has the following formal and thematic properties:
The picaro protagonist is an orphan cast out into the world, who becomes a
rascal (pp. 75-76).
The autobiographical mode. This enables us to view both the inner and the
outer man (pp. 81-82).
The protagonist has to discover values anew "as if by a godless Adam," in
Guilln's words (p. 79).
He is "a half outsider, unable either to join or to reject his fellow men" (p.
80).
There is stress on the material level of existence (p. 83).
The plot is episodic (pp. 84-85).
Then referring back to the picaro, Guilln characterizes him as a dissembler
or a hypocrite, and in a lapidary phrase: "The picaresque novel is, quite simply,
the autobiography of a liar." (p. 92)

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 SPANISH PICARESQUE FICTION AS A PROBLEM OF GENRE 5

Some of these qualities are less essential - and less clearly defined - t
others. And we could add a few more: in Lazarillo , Guzmn , and El Buscn,
ending is an ironic echo or restatement of the situation at the beginning
nothing that Guilln says can apply to all of the collection of novels t
anthologists persist in calling picaresque, neither the autobiographical mode,
the outsider status (a concept whose precise field is difficult to determine whe
is projected back into early modern Europe), nor the primal innocence.
Guilln's prescriptions were taken up and reformulated by Fernan
Lzaro Carreter and reinforced by Francisco Rico.8 Lzaro Carreter focuss
the institution of the genre; a picaresque genre existed, he argued, when Guz
de Alfarache incorporated structural elements derived from Lazarillo. Th
common features then provided a paradigm for subsequent writers. As Franc
Rico observed, a genre is not initiated by the first work of its kind, it is consti
when characteristic structures are disclosed and found to operate w
generative energy in works that follow. In Lzaro Carreter's scheme the prin
elements developed by Lazarillo that are further developed by Guzmn ar
1) The autobiography of "un desventurado sin escrpulos" narrated
sequence of episodes;
2) The autobiography is articulated by means of a succession of mas
who also provide the pretext for social criticism;
3) The whole narrative is offered as an explanation for the final state
dishonor in which the protagonist finds himself (pp. 206-7).
Lzaro Carreter is aware of the possibilities for modification: a writer m
develop this or that formal element and vary the relation between narrator a
reader. But then, shifting silently from theory to history, he maintains
whatever novelties and variations were introduced by later writers, the syste
continues to cohere by virtue of a centripetal force: "Se siente tentacin de v
que sigue a Alemn como una actividad destructiva, como haces de fuer
centrfugas, pero no; compensndolas hay otras que tienden al centro y
mantienen la relativa cohesin del sistema" (p. 228).
This is a more economical and elegant formulation than Guilln's, tho
both display evident affinity with Russian formalist criticism.9 Lzaro Carre
in particular was an inevitable reaction against the heavy stress in earl
academic criticism on definition by reference to content (p. 197). There was t
social satire that I've mentioned already; the pervasive Christian doctrin
Guzmn de Alfarache caused some scholars to look for generic unity in a cert
kind of moral message.10 Also, there had been disagreement over whet
Lazarillo or Guzmn de Alfarache should be regarded as the prototype of
genre. Those of the Lazarillo camp have looked upon Alemn's novel proclaimi
salvation as art overwhelmed by the demands of the Counterreformation, or
the author's desire for acceptance,11 while Alemn's supporters have se
Lazarillo as a distant precursor, and confined it to the limbo of the unbaptise
The solution offered by Lzaro Carreter and Francisco Rico was to
Guzmn over Lazarillo and to say that where the formal elements coincide, th

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
6 PETER N. DUNN

is the nucleus of the picare

and is almost universally
literature is high. The can
works. In critical discuss
cheerfully relegated to con
the end of a chapter.
Claudio Guilln was awar
when he wrote that "On
dogmatic monolith) and
seem nearly antithetical" (p
of the two works a fairer s
The dangers of reading ou
to all branches of investig
among the novels introd
factors are held to constitu
On the other hand, those
significance. The generic is
works from which it is deri
in studies of picaresque fict
clearly that Alemn was usi
way from that of the unk
makes a social point totally
principal motifs of both. Id
differences are inscribed, w
vehicles of meaning.
A category overlooked
extension, though the Russ
important to distinguish
about twelve times the leng
express qualitative differen
achieve and their means of
raised in poverty, is given t
in which a boy raised in l
composition is concise, lac
self-revelatory and overwh
vanity and concern with
disarming; Guzmn enfolds
general confesin".14
If one were to follow the
to his establishing himself
be many gaps; even so, th
Guzmn who goes from
back to Spain (Alcal, Madr
Lzaro assures us that he

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 SPANISH PICARESQUE FICTION AS A PROBLEM OF GENRE 7

writes as a convict on a galley and declares that he is now a new man as a resu
his spiritual conversion. Guzmn's is a trajectory that conveys a freigh
symbolic meaning, as it links the great political and commercial power center
the Christian Mediterranean. In Rome, too, the spiritual authority is converte
into the currency of secular power, and it is therefore both ironic and appropr
that the Holy City occupies the mid-point of Guzmn's narrative, b
nevertheless peripheral to his career and his personal Odyssey. (The opposi
the case in Cervantes' Persiles y Sigismundo, in which Rome is the final meet
place, where identities are revealed, destinies discovered, acts of self-dedicatio
made, eternal unions declared, time and space, past and present joined in a gre
apotheosic embrace.) Underlying all of this, as a master trope, is the figure of
epic journey: Guzmn's travels from Spain to Italy to Spain repeat, but
reverse, those of Odysseus from Greece to Italy to Greece. And Odysseus
befits a true hero, ends his story among his own people, on his own soil, whe
Guzmn is deprived of place. Then, by that rhetorical reversal of convention
frequently serves to encode spiritual experiences, Guzmn, like St. Paul, finds
new self out there in the middle of nowhere; he feels God's firm assurance w
he is adrift upon the ocean, that most shifting and fickle of the elements. In
time, we have heard too many former Watergate conspirators, hoodlums
football superstars claim to have been "born again", seen too many exclu
discos dedicated to "born agains", and may justifiably feel sceptical about even
fictonal conversion. But Alemn leaves us in no doubt about his intentions. Both
of these novels force us to put problematic quotes around such word
"success", "to rise", "a new man", but their biases could not be more radic
opposed.

* * *

Fictional autob
on his past self
readers can be
past experience
appear in a ran
from Robinson
Krapp* s Last
presented, is n
These two boo
extension, mot
authorial attitu
to whom Lza
never appears,
represents. Al
prologues: we a
whether we ch

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
8 PETER N. DUNN

pun carries a great weight, b

our ear to the word that b
authority of the writer diff
Vuestra Merced, but in retur
great teacher, and to the "v
relegates Vuestra Merced to
novel, in which we see the ac
from Vuestra Merced, is one
is unique, for nowhere else t
life, making his claim to exi
source of authority, making
until we come to Samuel Be
to proclaim the truth in seas
declare the possibility of s
authority, to which Guzm
outside his life, outside his
same Author as that acknow
behind, authorizes Guzmn
Authority, with a capital A.
motives for writing, there
Tormes from Guzmn de Alf
presentation, the first per
functionally and conveys tot
The weight, the solemnity,
designed not to engage in a f
sink it.
Let me recapitulate at this
model or typology encourage
the paradigms for a system c
an individual text in a way t
Insistence upon common stru
analogous response to eac
journey", motifs like "ingen
are not charged with fixed
variable. The generic mode
evaluating the radically diff
and in homologous pattern
description of the process of
part of his Validity in Inte
generic idea of the whole, w
cumulative experience and th
of reading. As Hirsch puts
becomes continuously more e
into a particularized and in

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 SPANISH PICARESQUE FICTION AS A PROBLEM OF GENRE 9

experience of reading and interpreting picaresque narratives is rarely allowed

dissolve the "generic idea of the whole" with which we started. The conc
'picaresque' that has been constructed does not fade into the individ
experience in the way that the concept 'tragedy' fades as we experience
reading or the spectacle of Macbeth . On the contrary, it remains unassimilate
unless we revert to a concept of picaresque that is so vague as to be useless
generic recognition.
What I have said about the relation of Guzmn to Lazarillo can be repeated
with variations, for all the picaresque works that followed: Marti's spurious Pa
II of Guzmn (1602), La Picara Justina , and so forth. Quevedo's Buscn can
seen as a travesty of Alemn's best seller for Quevedo's own dyspeptic purpose
rather than as an awkward piece of the puzzle that we have called 'the picaresq
novel'. We can note, too, how La picara Justina (1605) is both a self-parody
also a parody of Guzmn : in it, action dissolves into endless prattle rather th
sermons, and moralizings are put conveniently separate at the end of chapters
the reader can skip them. The protagonist announces that she is about to marr
Guzmn de Alfarache: so much for Guzmn's claim to be spiritually regenerate
There is nothing here to remind us of Lazarillo. In short, attention is here fix
not on the object of its messages, but on its own codes.
The case of Cervantes would appear to have been settled by the combi
authority of Amrico Castro (first in 1925 and repeatedly during the rest of a l
career) and Carlos Blanco Aguinaga in 1957, both of whom contrast Cervantes
ideological terms with Alemn.15 1 have reviewed Blanco's arguments elsewher
and cannot repeat them here; what Blanco does is take Guzmn as t
quintessential picaresque novel and oppose its 'dogmatism' to Cervan
humanism; Alemn's singleminded assertiveness to Cervantes' flexibility
Alemn presents the picaresque traits "llevados a un extremo absoluto" and it i
significant, I believe, that Cervantes is always contrasted wtih Alemn,
proclaimed extremist, rather than with some other manifestation of th
picaresque. The irreconcilable antagonism he finds between the "dos maneras d
realismo" represented by Cervantes and the picaresque ("totalmente antagnico
is the product of Carlos Blanco's rhetorical strategies as a persuasive critic
subtext is the myth of the 'two Spains' in which Alemn is clothed in the unifo
of authoritarian Spain, while Cervantes, with patient cunning, waits an
triumphs in posterity. The Spain of the Hapsburgs is not only a precursor of
Spain of Franco in the work of critics like Castro and Blanco, it is a kind
unfolding allegory with such key figures as El Greco, Alemn, Cervant
Caldern, playing the parts of historical abstractions. It is understandable
many readers have found Carlos Blanco's arguments difficult to resist. W
among us does not love Cervantes? And who has never yielded to th
seductiveness of a dualistic system? The Manichean image of Cervantes
champion of the light in history's ongoing struggle is an attractive one. But i
fair, either to Alemn or to Cervantes? Alemn at Almadn, defending
human rights of condemned criminals against the agents of the state and

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 10 PETER N. DUNN

foreign capital, is a no less adm

his comrades in Algiers. And
fiction are devastating in their
So, if critics have neglected t
relations between Guzmn an
order to emphasize generic co
readings of Cervantes. The fac
Rinconete y Cortadillo and th
episodes in other Novelas , in D
have been written without th
Indeed, he goes much farther
transformation of the whole r
referred to as picaresque. A
recently been assembled, and
recombined.
The prevailing formalist model of the picaresque novel has had the effect of
restricting the canon to a very small handful of works, and for a purist like
Francisco Rico, only two.17 The antipicaresque reading of Cervantes obviously
reinforces this state of things. Thanks to it, Cervantes is saved from being
engulfed by the picaresque, and the picaresque paradigm is in turn kept safe from
the disruption that the presence of Cervantes would be sure to produce in it.

Let us now try

generic model an
historical constit
beginning of th
identification of
useful move to b
at Spanish fictio
desire for such a
We certainly ne
at specific mom
Lazarillo , especia
Ass of Apuleius,
in the poitical de
readers saw it a
Chevalier, and th
literature looke
date t and 1 599,
of literature wou
success of the co
Vega's El peregri

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 SPANISH PICARESQUE FICTION AS A PROBLEM OF GENRE 1 1

read by a new generation of readers, when it was republished during the 1600's,
with much greater success than it had enjoyed previously. And so on, down
through the 1620's, 30's, and 40's. It would include, of course, the novels, and the
semi-documentary fiction such as Gua y avisos de forasteros que vienen a la Corte
de Madrid and La desordenada codicia de los bienes ajenos , because picaresque
literature is not to be understood in isolation from such semi-documentary
writings.
The vogue for low-life settings begun by Celestina , the marginal pro-
tagonists, the first person narrative with its possibilities for irony, these come
together in a few unusual works, but as I see the matter, they are the means for a
radical transformation of several existing genres and not the installation of a new
one. The long romance, which Guzmn essentially is, profoundly influences
Cervantes' Persiles y Sigismundo and other long novels of the following decades,
that few people now read. In earlier fiction, the principal characters had been
stable, and their relation to their world was given, and narrowly defined. Their
status was inseparable from their identity: a knight, a priest, a merchant, a prince,
a man of law, a peasant. Picaresque fiction helps to change that. Picaresque
characters and episodes appear in short novels, poems, autobiographies, plays.
Much of this writing is shallow or merely decorative, but then so is most
literature. At its best, it probes the relation of self, role, and society in totally new
ways by finding new ironic or parodie or tragicomic forms of the quest narrative.
Francisco Rico has written that the first person narration problematized
reality.19 It does more than that, for in the autobiographical mode the whole
fictional world may become the creation of a self-conscious subject. This
discourse of the self-conscious subject, as the only discourse of a fictional text, is
new in history and yet it does not so much create a new genre as revivify and
transform existing ones. In addition, the fact that the self-conscious subject is
ignoble, an anti-heroic or low-life figure, indicates that the traditional authority
of the narrator is being subverted. So, too, is the idea of decorum, of biensance ,
which has always been underwritten by the seemingly objective valuation of
social hierarchy. The canonical figures of respect and authority - knights, kings,
beautiful ladies - are being abandoned at the same time that the authority of the
narrative voice is becoming less absolute.
If that can be said, then it seems to me that we are talking broadly about the
modern novel, to paraphrase Bakhtin.20 But the characteristics that we call
picaresque develop, not by forming a tightly self-contained organism of their
own, but rather by invading, in the manner of a virus, the genres of travel
literature, of satiric poetry, of romance, of soldierly adventure, of autobiography,
of ingenious swindlers (male and female). One result of this invasion is to give to
"verisimilitude" an abrupt shift in the direction of a discourse that resembles
reportage. Here we touch yet another problem, for topics such as 'picaresque'
poverty and marginality and alienation, that have been generated within the
discourses of twentieth-century social sciences, cannot be properly discussed so
long as they continue to be presented in purely sociological terms. They must be

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 12 PETER N. DUNN

analyzed in the context of a fu

perceived as literary realism
mode. This would carry us in
interestingly and productive
worlds". The anthropological
enable us to reframe the aberr
instead of as simple mimetic
This paper, then is turning i
picaresque narrative, one whi
formal and ideological - as th
of the writers and their reader
deserves to be read for wha
picaresque genre. Our aim sh
significance that have been r
contemporary 'non-picaresque'
relation to each other in linear
novel.' The history of a genre
categories that were underwri
'picaresque genre' that we have
historical oversimplification
century scholarship to wield
question of the origin of genr
a problem of history; or, if it
naming, of taxonomy, not the
Hayden White has said that t
the classics their original str
objective, but I would say th
Robert Weimann has explained
present significance, and als
them.22

NOTES

Joseph L. Laurentius A Bibliography of Picaresque Literature: From Its Origins to the Pres
(Laurenti 1973) contained 2439 items; the Supplement (Laurenti 1981) lists works published alm
entirely between 1973 and 1978, and they number 1009 for those few years.

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 SPANISH PICARESQUE FICTION AS A PROBLEM OF GENRE 13

2This is a recurrent motif in the literary history of picaresque fiction since F.W. Chandle
Romances of Roguery (Chandler). See more recently, Walter L. Reed, An Exemplary History of
Novel ( Reed), ch. 2.
3Hirsch 76.
4W.M. Frohock, "The Failing Center: Recent Fiction and the Picaresque Tradition"
(Frohock). The wide and loose application of the terms "picaresque" to fiction of many periods and
places has created a problem of a different order from the one I wish to introduce here. Ulrich Wicks,
in "The Nature of Picaresque Narrative: A Modal Approach"(Wicks), argues for a spectrum of
narrative modes on which "picaresque" can occupy a place. His "picaresque mode" embodies an
"essential picaresque situation" (242a) and, following Northrop Frye, a vision of a world that is
worse than the reader's. Wicks' concern is to restore credit to the word, to avoid "banishing the term
picaresque' from all but the historically definable genre of la novela picaresca " (241b). I don't,
however, want to exempt the concept la novela picaresca from examination but, on the contrary, to
offer a critical review of what it covers, and to call into question the assumption that it is no longer
problematic. Indeed, it is just as unstable a fiction as "literary history" is.
5de Haan 8.
6Notably in Chandler, Romances of Roguery , but earlier in such general works as George
Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature (Ticknor 1879, and later eds.). In fact, the first translator of
Lazarillo de Tormes , David Rowland of Anglesey, recommends it for "by reading hereof, such as have
not travailed Spaine, may as well discerne much of the manners and customs of that country, as those
that have there long time continued." See The Pleasaunt Historie of Lazarillo de Tormes 3.
7Claudio Guilln, "La disposicin temporal de Lazarillo de Tormes " (Guilln); Stephen
Gilman, "The Death of Lazarillo de Tormes" (Gilman); Francisco Rico, La novela picaresca y el
punto de vista (Rico). I offer these works as paradigmatic, not as a definitive list.
8Lzaro Carreter, "Para una revisin del concepto 'Novela picaresca'," Lzaro Carreter
1968; reprinted in Lzaro Carreter 1972. 1 quote from the latter printing.
'This affinity is evident in their common perception of a dynamic, dialectical relation between
coexistent literary forms. This connection between the new and the old is barely sketched by the
Spanish critics, however, in contrast to the Formalists' acute awareness of diachronic intertextuality.
See Hans Robert Jauss, "Literary History as Challenge" (Jauss) 17.
Notably, Alexander A. Parker, Literature and the Delinquent . The Picaresque Novel in Spain
and Europe 1599-1753 (Parker 1967). The Spanish version is Los picaros en la literatura. La novela
picaresca en Espaa y Europa (Parker 1971).
"Alberto del Monte, Itinerario de la novela picaresca espaola. (Monte); Maurice Molho,
Introduccin al pensamiento picaresco (Molho).
12Most emphatically by Parker 1967.
13 Victor Erlich, Russian Formalism, History-Doctrine (Erlich) 247.
lAGuzmn de Alfarache , II, 1, i. Text in Rico, ed., 484.
15 Amrico Castro, El pensamiento de Cervantes (Castro 1925); Hacia Cervantes (Castro 1957;
rev. eds., 1960, 1967); Cervantes y los casticismos espaoles (Castro 1966); Carlos Blanco Aguinaga,
"Cervantes y la picaresca: Notas sobre dos tipos de realismo" (Blanco Aguinaga 1957). An abridged
version of this last has been translated as "Cervantes and the Picaresque Mode: Notes on Two Kinds
of Realism," in Lowry J. Nelson, ed. Cervantes: A Collection of Critical Essays. Twentieth Century
Views (Blanco Aguinaga 1967).
16Blanco Aquinaga 1982; see pp. 112, 115-117.
17Rico, cap. 3.
18Maxime Chevalier, Lectura y lectores en la Espaa de los siglos XVI y XVII (Chevalier 1976a);
"Cuento folklrico, cuentecillo tradicional y literatura del Siglo de Oro" (Chevalier 1979); Picaresque
europenne (Chevalier 1976b); Lzaro Carreter 1968; Marcel Bataillon, Novedad y fecundidad del
Lazarillo (Bataillon); Alexander Scobie, "Petronius, Apuleius, and the Spanish Picaresque Romance"
(Scobie); Michel Cavillac, Gueux et marchands dans le Guzmn de Alfarache (1599-1604). (Cavillaci.
19Rico, cap 3.
20Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination. (Bakhtin), particularly Essay 2, "From the
Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse."
21Hayden White, "Literary History; The Point of It All" (White); see pp. 181-3.
22Robert Weimann, Structure and Society in Literary History (Weimann) 56.

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 14 PETER N. DUNN

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays. Austin: U of Texas P
Bataillon, Marcel. 1968. Novedad y fecundidad del Lazarillo. Salamanca: Anaya.
Blanco Aguinaga, Carlos. 1957. "Cervantes y la picaresca: Notas sobre dos tipos de reali
Revista de Filologia Hispnica 11: 314-42.
- . 1967. "Cervantes and the Picaresque Mode: Notes on Two Kinds of Realism." Ce
Collection of Critical Essays. Twentieth Century Views. Lowry J. Nelson, ed.
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 137-51.
Castro, Amrico. 1925. El pensamiento de Cervantes. Madrid. Revista de Filologia Es
- . 1957. Hacia Cervantes. Madrid: Taurus. Rev. eds., 1960, 1967.
- . 1966. Cervantes y los casticismos expaoles. Madrid: Alfaguara.
Cavillac, Michel. 1983. Gueux et marchands dans le Guzman de Alfarache (1599-160
Institut Etudes Ibriques et Ibro-amricaines de l'Universit de Bordeaux.
Chandler, F.W. 1899. Romances of Roguery. New York: Macmillan.
Chevalier, Maxime. 1976a. Lectura y lectores en la Espaa de los siglos XVI y XVII. Ma
- . 1976b. Picaresque europenne. Actes du Colloque Internationale du C.E.R.S. Mont
1976. Montpellier: Universit Paul Valry.
- . 1979. '"Cuento folklrico, cuentecillo tradicional y literatura del Siglo de Oro." Act
Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas celebrado en Toronto, 1977. Toronto: U of
5-11.

de Haan, Fonger. 1903. An Outline History of the Novela Picaresca in Spain. New York: M. Nijhoff.
Dunn, Peter. 1982. "Cervantes De/Re-Constructs the Picaresque." Cervantes 2: 109-31.
Erlich, Victor. 1981. Russian Formalism, History-Doctrine. New Haven: Yale U P. 3rd ed.
Frohock, W.M. 1969. "The Failing Center: Recent Fiction and the Picaresque Tradition." Novel 3:
62-69.
Gilman, Stephen. 1966. "The Death of Lazarillo de Tormes." PMLA 81: 149-66.
Guilln, Claudio. 1957. "La disposicin temporal de Lazarillo de Tormes ." Hispanic Review 25:
264-79.

Hirsch, E. D. 1967. Validity in Interpretation. New Haven: Yale U P.

Jauss, Hans Robert. 1982. "Literary History as Challenge." Toward an Aesthetic of Reception.
Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P.
Laurenti, Joseph L. 1973. A Bibliography of Picaresque Literature: From Its Origins to the Present.
Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow P.
- . 1981. A Bibliography of Picaresque Literature: From Its Origins to the Present. Supplement. New
York: AMS.
Lzaro Carreter, Fernando. 1968. "Para una revisin del concepto 'Novela picaresca'." Actas del III
Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas celebrado in Mexico, 1968. Mexico: El Colegio de
Mexico. 27-45. Reprinted in Lazaro Carreter 1972, 193-229.
- . 1972. Lazarillo de Tormes en la picaresca. Esplugues de Llobregat. Barcelona: Ariel.
Molho, Maurice. 1972. Introduccin al pensamiento picaresco. Salamanca: Anaya.
Monte, Alberto del. 1971. Itinerario de la novela picaresca espaola. Barcelona: Lumen.
Parker, Alexander A. 1967. Literature and the Delinquent. The Picaresque Novel in Spain and Europe
1599-1753. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U P. Trans, into Spanish, Parker 1971.
- . 197 1 . Los picaros en la literatura. La novela picaresca en Espaa y Europa ( 1599-1753). Madrid:
Gredos.

The Pleasaunt Historie of Lazarillo de Tormes , Drawen out of Spanish by David Rowland of Anglesey,
London, 1586. Ed. J.E.V. Crofts. Oxford: Blackwell, 1924.
Reed, Walter L. 1981. An Exemplary History of the Novel. Chicago: Chicago U P.
Rico, Francisco. 1970. La novela picaresca y el punto de vista. Barcelona: Seix Barrai.
Rico, Francisco, ed. 1970. La novela picaresca. Barcelona: Pianeta. 2d. ed.
Scobie, Alexander. 1966. "Petronius, Apuleius, and the Spanish Picaresque Romance." Words 2:
92-100.

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 SPANISH PICARESQUE FICTION AS A PROBLEM OF GENRE 15

Ticknor, George. 1879. History of Spanish Literature. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin.

Weimann, Robert. 1976. Structure and Society in Literary History. Charlottesville: Virginia U P
White, Hayden. 1970. "Literary History: The Point of It All." New Literary History 2: 173-85.
Wicks, Ulrich. 1974. "The Nature of Picaresque Narrative: A Modal Approach." PMLA 89: 240-

This content downloaded from 150.131.192.151 on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:05:32 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms