Picaresque novel

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The picaresque novel (Spanish: picaresca,

from pícaro, for "rogue" or "rascal") is a
genre of prose fiction that depicts the
adventures of a roguish, but "appealing
hero", of low social class, who lives by his
wits in a corrupt society.[1] Picaresque
novels typically adopt a realistic style, with
elements of comedy and satire. This style
of novel originated in Spain in 1554 and
flourished throughout Europe for more
than 200 years, though the term
"picaresque novel" was only coined in
1810. It continues to influence modern
literature. The term is also sometimes
used to describe works, like Cervantes'
Don Quixote and Charles Dickens'
Pickwick Papers, which only contain some
of the genre's elements.

Defined
According to the traditional view of Thrall
and Hibbard (first published in 1936),
seven qualities distinguish the picaresque
novel or narrative form, all or some of
which an author may employ for effect:[2]

A picaresque narrative is usually written

in first person as an autobiographical
account.
The main character is often of low
character or social class. He or she gets
by with wits and rarely deigns to hold a
job.
There is no plot. The story is told in a
series of loosely connected adventures
or episodes.
There is little if any character
development in the main character.
Once a pícaro, always a pícaro. His or
 her circumstances may change but
these rarely result in a change of heart.
The pícaro's story is told with a
plainness of language or realism.
Satire is sometimes a prominent
element.
The behavior of a picaresque hero or
heroine stops just short of criminality.
Carefree or immoral rascality positions
the picaresque hero as a sympathetic
outsider, untouched by the false rules of
society.

In the English-speaking world, the term

"picaresque" is often used loosely to refer
to novels that contain some elements of
this genre; e.g. an episodic recounting of
adventures on the road.

History
Etymology

The word pícaro first starts to appear in

Spain with the current meaning in 1545,
though at the time it had no association
with literature.[3] The word pícaro does not
appear in Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), the
novella credited by modern scholars with
founding the genre. The expression
picaresque novel was coined in 1810.[4][5]
Whether it has any validity at all as a
generic label in the Spanish sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries—Cervantes
certainly used "picaresque" with a different
meaning than it has today—has been
called into question. There is unresolved
debate within Hispanic studies about what
the term means, or meant, and which
works were, or should be, so called. The
only work clearly called "picaresque" by its
contemporaries was Mateo Alemán's
Guzmán de Alfarache (1599), which to
them was the Libro del pícaro (The Book
of the Pícaro).[6]

Lazarillo de Tormes and its

sources
While elements of Chaucer and Boccaccio
have a picaresque feel and may have
contributed to the style,[7] the modern
picaresque begins with Lazarillo de
Tormes,[8] which was published
anonymously in 1554 in Burgos, Medina
del Campo, and Alcalá de Henares in
Spain, and also in Antwerp, which at the
time was under Spanish rule as a major
city in the Spanish Netherlands. It is
variously considered either the first
picaresque novel or at least the
antecedent of the genre.

The protagonist, Lázaro, lives by his wits in

an effort to survive and succeed in an
impoverished country full of hypocrisy. As
a pícaro character, he is an alienated
outsider, whose ability to expose and
ridicule individuals compromised with
society gives him a revolutionary stance.[9]
Lázaro states that the motivation for his
writing is to communicate his experiences
of overcoming deception, hypocrisy, and
falsehood (engaño).[10]

The character type draws on elements of

characterization already present in Roman
literature, especially Petronius' Satyricon.
Lázaro shares some of the traits of the
central figure of Encolpius, a former
gladiator,[11][12] though it is unlikely that the
author had access to Petronius' work.[13]
From the comedies of Plautus, Lazarillo
borrows the figure of the parasite and the
supple slave. Other traits are taken from
Apuleius's The Golden Ass.[11] The Golden
Ass and Satyricon are rare surviving
samples of the "Milesian tale", a popular
genre in the classical world, and were
revived and widely read in Renaissance
Europe.

The principal episodes of Lazarillo are

based on Arabic folktales that were well-
known to the Moorish inhabitants of
Spain. The Arabic influence may account
for the negative portrayal of priests and
other church officials in Lazarillo.[14] Arabic
literature, which was read widely in Spain
in the time of Al-Andalus and possessed a
literary tradition with similar themes, is
thus another possible influence on the
picaresque style. Al-Hamadhani (d.1008)
of Hamadhan (Iran) is credited with
inventing the literary genre of maqamat in
which a wandering vagabond makes his
living on the gifts his listeners give him
following his extemporaneous displays of
rhetoric, erudition, or verse, often done
with a trickster's touch.[15] Ibn al-Astarkuwi
or al-Ashtarkuni (d.1134) also wrote in the
genre maqamat, comparable to later
European picaresque.[16]
The curious presence of Russian loan-
words in the text of the Lazarillo also
suggests the influence of medieval Slavic
tales of tricksters, thieves, itinerant
prostitutes, and brigands, who were
common figures in the impoverished areas
bordering on Germany to the west. When
diplomatic ties to Germany and Spain were
established under the emperor Charles V,
these tales began to be read in Italian
translations in the Iberian Peninsula.[17]

As narrator of his own adventures, Lázaro

seeks to portray himself as the victim of
both his ancestry and his circumstance.
This means of appealing to the
compassion of the reader would be
directly challenged by later picaresque
novels such as Guzmán de Alfarache
(1599/1604) and the Buscón (composed
in the first decade of the 17th century and
first published in 1626) because the idea
of determinism used to cast the pícaro as
a victim clashed with the Counter-
Reformation doctrine of free will.[18]

16th and 17th centuries

Title page of the book Guzmán de Alfarache (1599)

An early example is Mateo Alemán's

Guzmán de Alfarache (1599),
characterized by religiosity. Guzmán de
Alfarache is a fictional character who lived
in San Juan de Aznalfarache, Seville,
Spain.
Francisco de Quevedo's El buscón (1604
according to Francisco Rico; the exact
date is uncertain, yet it was certainly a very
early work) is considered the masterpiece
of the subgenre by A. A. Parker, because of
his baroque style and the study of the
delinquent psychology. However, a more
recent school of thought, led by Francisco
Rico, rejects Parker's view, contending
instead that the protagonist, Pablos, is a
highly unrealistic character, simply a
means for Quevedo to launch classist,
racist and sexist attacks. Moreover, argues
Rico, the structure of the novel is radically
different from previous works of the
picaresque genre: Quevedo uses the
conventions of the picaresque as a mere
vehicle to show off his abilities with
conceit and rhetoric, rather than to
construct a satirical critique of Spanish
Golden Age society.

Miguel de Cervantes wrote several works

"in the picaresque manner, notably
Rinconete y Cortadillo (1613) and El
coloquio de los perros (1613; “Colloquy of
the Dogs”)". "Cervantes also incorporated
elements of the picaresque into his
greatest novel, Don Quixote (1605,
1615)",[19] the "single most important
progenitor of the modern novel", that M. H.
Abrams has described as a "quasi-
picaresque narrative".[20] Here the hero is
not a rogue but a foolish knight.

In order to understand the historical

context that led to the development of
these paradigmatic picaresque novels in
Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries, it
is essential to take into consideration the
circumstances surrounding the lives of
conversos, whose ancestors had been
Jewish, and whose New Christian faith
was subjected to close scrutiny and
mistrust.[21]

In other European countries, these Spanish

novels were read and imitated. In
Germany, Grimmelshausen wrote
Simplicius Simplicissimus[22] (1669), the
most important of non-Spanish picaresque
novels. It describes the devastation
caused by the Thirty Years' War. Le Sage's
Gil Blas (1715) is a classic example of the
genre,[23] which in France had declined into
an aristocratic adventure. In Britain, the
first example is Thomas Nashe's The
Unfortunate Traveller (1594) in which a
court page, Jack Wilson, exposes the
underclass life in a string of European
cities through lively, often brutal
descriptions.[24] The body of Tobias
Smollett's work, and Daniel Defoe's Moll
Flanders (1722) are considered
picaresque, but they lack the sense of
religious redemption of delinquency that
was very important in Spanish and
German novels. The triumph of Moll
Flanders is more economic than moral.
While the mores of the early 18th Century
wouldn't permit Moll to be a heroine per se,
Defoe hardly disguises his admiration for
her resilience and resourcefulness.

Works with some picaresque

elements

The autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini,

written in Florence beginning in 1558, also
has much in common with the picaresque.
The classic Chinese novel Journey to the
West is considered to have considerable
picaresque elements. Having been written
in 1590, it is contemporary with much of
the above—but is unlikely to have been
directly influenced by the European genre.

18th and 19th centuries

Henry Fielding proved his mastery of the

form in Joseph Andrews (1742), The Life
and Death of Jonathan Wild, the Great
(1743) and The History of Tom Jones, a
Foundling (1749), though Fielding
attributed his style to an "imitation of the
manner of Cervantes, author of Don
Quixote".[25]

William Makepeace Thackeray is the

master of the 19th Century English
picaresque. Like Moll Flanders,
Thackeray's best-known work, Vanity Fair
A Novel Without a Hero (1847-1848),(a
title ironically derived from John Bunyan's
Puritan allegory of redemption The
Pilgrim's Progress(1678)), follows the
career of fortune-hunting adventuress
Becky Sharp. His earlier novel The Luck of
Barry Lyndon (1844) recounts the rise and
fall of an Irish arriviste conniving his way
into the 18th century English aristocracy.
Aleko Konstantinov wrote the novel Bay
Ganyo (1895) about a Bulgarian rogue of
that name who does business and
swindles around Europe, and returns home
and gets into politics and newspaper
publishing. Bay Ganyo is a well-known
stereotype in Bulgaria.

Works influenced by the

picaresque

In the English-speaking world, the term

"picaresque" has referred more to a literary
technique or model than to the precise
genre that the Spanish call picaresco.[26]
The English-language term can simply
refer to an episodic recounting of the
adventures of an anti-hero on the road.[27]

Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of

Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1761-1767)
and A Sentimental Journey Through
France and Italy (1768) each have strong
picaresque elements. Voltaire's French
novel Candide (1759) contains elements
of the picaresque. An interesting variation
on the tradition of the picaresque is The
Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan
(1824), a satirical view on early 19th-
century Persia, written by a British
diplomat, James Morier.
Elements of the picaresque novel are
found in Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick
Papers (1836–37).[28] Gogol occasionally
used the technique, as in Dead Souls
(1842–52).[29] Mark Twain's Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (1884) also has some
elements of the picaresque novel.[28]

20th and 21st centuries

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Statue of Ostap Bender in Elista

Kvachi Kvachantiradze is a novel written

by Mikheil Javakhishvili in 1924.This is, in
brief, the story of a swindler, a Georgian
Felix Krull, or perhaps a cynical Don
Quixote, named Kvachi Kvachantiradze:
womanizer, cheat, perpetrator of insurance
fraud, bank-robber, associate of Rasputin,
filmmaker, revolutionary, and pimp.

The Twelve Chairs (1928) and its sequel,

The Little Golden Calf (1931), by Ilya Ilf
and Yevgeni Petrov became classics of the
20th century Russian satire and basis for
numerous film adaptations.
Camilo José Cela's La familia de Pascual
Duarte (1942) and The Adventures of
Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953) were
also among mid-twentieth century
picaresque literature. John A. Lee's
Shining with the Shiner (1944) tells
amusing tales about New Zealand folk
hero Ned Slattery (1840–1927) surviving
by his wits and beating the Protestant
work ethic', So too is Thomas Mann's
Confessions of Felix Krull (1954), which
like many novels emphasizes the theme of
a charmingly roguish ascent in the social
order. Günter Grass's The Tin Drum (1959)
is a German picaresque novel.
Recent examples include Under the Net
(1954) by Iris Murdoch,[30] Jerzy Kosinski's
The Painted Bird (1965), Vladimir
Voinovich's The Life and Extraordinary
Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1969),
Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus
(1984), Umberto Eco's Baudolino
(2000),[31] and Aravind Adiga's The White
Tiger (Booker Prize 2008).[32]

William S. Burroughs was a devoted fan of

picaresque novels, and gave a series of
lectures involving the topic in 1979 at
Naropa University in Colorado. In these he
says it is impossible to separate the anti-
hero from the Picaresque novel, that most
of these are funny, and they all have
protagonist who are outsiders by their
nature. His list of picaresque novels
includes Petronius' novel Satyricon (54-68
AD), The Unfortunate Traveller (1594) by
Thomas Nashe, (1911), both Maiden
Voyage (1943) and A Voice Through a
Cloud (1950) by Denton Welch, Two
Serious Ladies (1943) by Jane Bowles,
Death on Credit (1936) by Louis-Ferdinand
Céline, and even himself. He also relates a
series of real life newspaper stories that
Burroughs himself had collected, in which
people abandoned their jobs in order to
save their own skin, leaving numbers of
people to die. [33]
Works influenced by the
picaresque

Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk

(1923) is an example of a work from
Central Europe, that has picaresque
elements.

J. B. Priestley made use of the form in his

The Good Companions (1929) which won
the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for
Fiction.

See also
Adventure novel
Becky Sharp (character)
 Fool's literature
Maqama
Milesian tale

Notes
1. Oxford English Dictionary.
2. Thrall, William and Addison Hibbard.
A Handbook to Literature. The
Odyssey Press, New York. 1960.
3. Best, O. F. Para la etimología de
pícaro , in Nueva Revista de Filología
Hispánica, Vol. 17, No. 3/4
(1963/1964), pp. 352-357
4. Merriam-Webster's collegiate
dictionary By Merriam-Webster, Inc
 p.936
5. Spanish loanwords in the English
language: a tendency towards
hegemony reversal By Félix
Rodríguez González p.36
6. Daniel Eisenberg, "Does the
Picaresque Novel Exist?", Kentucky
Romance Quarterly, 26, 1979, pp.
203-219,
http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/deisenbe/
Other_Hispanic_Topics/does_the_pic
aresque.pdf , retrieved 2014-08-30
7. Seán Ó Neachtain (2000). The History
of Éamon O'Clery . Clo Iar-Chonnacht.
 p. 6. ISBN 978-1-902420-35-6.
Retrieved 30 May 2013.
8. Harriet Turner; Adelaida L Pez De
Mart Nez (11 September 2003). The
Cambridge Companion to the
Spanish Novel: From 1600 to the
Present . Cambridge University
Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-521-77815-
2. Retrieved 30 May 2013.
9. Cruz, Anne J. (2008). Approaches to
teaching Lazarillo de Tormes and the
picaresque tradition . p.19 ("The
pícaro's revolutionary stance, as an
alienated outsider who nevertheless
 constructs his own self and his
world").
10. Textual confrontations: comparative
readings in Latin American literature
by Alfred J. Mac Adam, p.138
11. Chaytor, Henry John (1922)La vida de
Lazarillo de Tormes p.vii
12. The life of Lazarillo de Tormes: his
fortunes and adversities (1962) p.18
13. Martin, René (1999) Le Satyricon:
Pétrone p.105
14. Fouad Al-Mounir, "The Muslim
Heritage of Lazarillo de Tormes," The
Maghreb Review vol. 8, no. 2 (1983),
pp. 16-17.
15. James T. Monroe, The art of Badi'u 'l-
Zaman al-Hamadhani as picaresque
narrative (American University of
Beirut c1983).
16. James T. Monroe, translator, Al-
Maqamat al-luzumiyah, by Abu-l-Tahir
Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Tamimi al-
Saraqus'i ibn al-Astarkuwi (Leiden:
Brill 2002).
17. S. Rodzevich, "K istorii russkogo
romantizma", Russky Filologichesky
Vestnik, 77 (1917), 194-237 (in
Russian).
18. Boruchoff, David A: “Free Will, the
Picaresque, and the Exemplarity of
 Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares,” M L
N [Modern Language Notes] 124, 2
(2009), pp. 372-403.
19. "Picaresque", Britannica online [1]
20. A Glossary of Literary Terms (7th
edition, Harcourt Brace, 1985, p. 191
21. For an overview of scholarship on the
role of conversos in the development
of the picaresque novel in 16th- and
17th-century Spain, see Yael Halevi-
Wise, “The Life and Times of the
Pícaro Converso from Spain to Latin
America” in Sephardism: Spanish
Jewish History in the Modern Literary
Imagination (Stanford UP, 2011)
22. Grimmelshausen, H. J. Chr. (1669).
Der abentheurliche Simplicissimus
[The adventurous Simplicissimus] (in
German). Nuremberg: J. Fillion.
OCLC 22567416 .
23. Paulson, Ronald Reviewed work(s):
Rogue's Progress: Studies in the
Picaresque Novel by Robert Alter ,
The Journal of English and Germanic
Philology, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Apr., 1965),
p.303
24. Schmidt, Michael. The Novel: A
Biography'. Cambridge:Belknap
Press. 2014.'
25. The title page of the first edition of
Joseph Andrews lists its full title as:
The History of the Adventures of
Joseph Andrews, and of His Friend
Mr. Abraham Adams. Written in
Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes,
Author of Don Quixote.
26. Sarkar, Somnath. "Picaresque Novel:
An Analysis ~ All About English
Literature" . Retrieved 2019-08-04.
27. "Picaresque novel | literature" .
Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved
2019-08-04.
28. "Picaresque", Britannica online.
29. Striedter, Jurij. Der Schelmenroman in
Russland: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte
des Russischen Romans vor Gogol,
Berlin 1961
30. Chosen by Time magazine and
Modern Library editors as one of the
greatest English-language novels of
the 20th century. See Under the Net.
31. As expressed by the author "With
Baudolino, Eco Returns to Romance
Writing" . The Modern News. 11
September 2000. Archived from the
original on 6 September 2006.
32. Sanderson, Mark (4 November 2003).
"The picaresque, in detail" . Telegraph
 (UK). Retrieved March 16, 2010.
33. NewThinkable (7 March 2013). "Class
On Creative Reading - William S.
Burroughs - 2/3" . Retrieved 14 March
2018 – via YouTube.

References
Parker, Alexander Augustine (1967).
Literature and the delinquent : the
picaresque novel in Spain and Europe,
1599-1753. Norman Maccoll lecture.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
OCLC 422136249 .
Cruz, Anne J. (2008). Approaches to
teaching Lazarillo de Tormes and the
picaresque tradition . Modern Language
 Association of America. ISBN 978-1-
60329-016-6.

Further reading
Robert Alter (1965) Rogue's progress:
studies in the picaresque novel
Garrido Ardila, Juan Antonio El género
picaresco en la crítica literaria, Madrid,
Biblioteca Nueva, 2008.
Garrido Ardila, Juan Antonio La novela
picaresca en Europa, Madrid, Visor
libros, 2009.
Meyer-Minnemann, Klaus and
Schlickers, Sabine (eds) La novela
picaresca: Concepto genérico y
 evolución del género (siglos XVI y XVII),
Madrid, Iberoamericana, 2008.
Norman M. Klein and Margo Bistis, The
Imaginary 20th Century, Karlsruhe, ZKM:
Center for Art and Media, 2016.
http://imaginary20thcentury.com

External links
Media related to Picaresque novel at
Wikimedia Commons

El Género Picaresco: La Novela

Picaresca Española y Su Influencia (in
Spanish)
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