Picaresque novel
For the album by the Decemberists, see Picaresque (album).The
picaresque novel (
Spanish:
"picaresca", from
"pícaro", for "rogue" or "rascal") is a popular subgenre of prose
fiction which is usually
satirical and depicts in
realistic and often humorous detail the
adventures of a roguish
hero of low
social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society. This style of
novel originated in
Spain and flourished in
Europe in the
17th and
18th centuries and continues to influence modern literature.
The genre has classical precedent in
Petronius's fragmentary "
Satyricon" and in
Apuleius's "
The Golden Ass", and elements of
Chaucer and
Boccaccio have a picaresque feel, but the modern picaresque begins with
Lazarillo de Tormes, published anonymously in
Antwerp and
Spain in
1554 and variously considered either the first picaresque novel or at least an antecedent to the genre. The title character Lazarillo is a
pícaro who must live by his wits in an impoverished country full of hypocrisy. The autobiography of
Benvenuto Cellini, written in
Florence beginning in
1558, also has much in common with the picaresque. The first unquestioned picaresque novel was published in
1599:
Mateo Alemán's
Guzmán de Alfarache, characterized by religiosity.
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. A more recent school of thought, however, 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.
In other European countries, these Spanish novels were read and imitated. In
Germany,
Grimmelshausen wrote
Simplicissimus (
1669), the most important of non-Spanish picaresque novels. It describes the devastation caused by the
Thirty Years' War. In
France, this kind of novel declined into an aristocratic adventure:
Le Sage's
Gil Blas (
1715). In
England, 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.
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. The English-language term can simply refer to an episodic recounting of the adventures of an
anti-hero on the road.
Henry Fielding proved his mastery of the form in
Joseph Andrews (
1742),
The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great (
1743) and
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (
1749), but, as Fielding himself wrote, these novels were written in imitation of the manner of
Cervantes, author of
Don Quixote, not in imitation of the picaresque novel. Nevertheless, Cervantes himself wrote a short picaresque novel,
Rinconete y Cortadillo part of his
Novelas Ejemplares (Exemplary Novels).
Other novels with elements of the picaresque include the French
Candide, the Canadian
Solomon Gursky Was Here and the English
The Luck of Barry Lyndon.
Some modern novelists have used some techniques of the antique novels, as
Gogol in
Dead Souls (1842-52).
Rudyard Kipling's
Kim (
1901) combined the influence of the picaresque novel with the then new
spy novel.
Jaroslav Hašek's
The Good Soldier Svejk (
1923?) was the first example of the picaresque technique in
Central Europe.
Mark Twain's
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was consciously written as a picaresque novel, as were many other novels of vagabond life, such as
Jack Kerouac's
On the Road (
1957);
Saul Bellow's
The Adventures of Augie March is a picaresque novel with
bildungsroman traits.
Hunter S. Thompson's "
gonzo journalism" can be seen as a hybrid of fictional picaresque with memoir and traditional reportage. The picaresque elements are especially prominent in his less journalistic, more literary and psychotopically themed works, such as "
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "The Great Shark Hunt". A rather darker use of picaresque tradition can be found in
Jerzy Kosinski's
The Painted Bird (
1965).
Sergio Leone identified his
Spaghetti Westerns, more specifically his
Dollars trilogy, as being in the picaresque style.
Other recent examples are
Camilo José Cela's
La familia de Pascual Duarte (
1951),
Günter Grass's The Tin Drum (1959), Rita Mae Brown's
Rubyfruit Jungle (
1973)
Helen Zahavi's
Dirty Weekend (
1991), and
Stewart Home's
Cunt (
1999).
*
Adventure novel*Alexander A. Parker:
Literature and the delinquent: The picaresque novel in Spain and Europe, 1599-1753.
