Picaresque Novel

Lure of the Picaresque Novel

Ryan and Don Roger

12

Lure of the Picaresque Novel

            Let us begin by asking – what is the picaresque novel? According to Wikipedia, “the picaresque novel, is a genre of prose fiction that depicts the adventures of a roguish but appealing hero, usually of a low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. Picaresque novels typically adopt the form of an episodic prose narrative with a realistic style.”

            Is Don Quixote a picaresque novel? It has been called a picaresque novel by English standards, but rarely, if ever, by Spanish ones. Yes, Don Quixote is prose fiction that relates the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. However, while Sancho is of low social class, Quixote himself most certainly isn’t. He is a landowner, with an expensive library, and a solid education. He is literate, though Sancho is not. Does Don Quixote live by his wits? Good question. Some would say yes, he does. Others, including the first-person narrator in DQI, I/1, would say his brain was so decayed with his all-night readings that it had dried up and he had no wits left to lose. Is the society around him corrupt? This is a much more difficult question to answer.

            In an earlier discussion, The Golden Age, we saw that Don Quixote, in his speech to the goat herds, contrasted the idyllic golden age of the Edenic pastoral with the corruption of contemporary society. As we mentioned earlier, neither description is truly accurate. As for the society in which Don Quixote moves, he meets, in the course of the novel, more than 600 characters, many of them unforgettable, some of whom are good, and some bad. More, Cervantes’s description of Spanish society is so wide and it is painted in such depth that it is hard to generalize and call that society corrupt. In addition, while Don Quixote meets low class characters in his travellers, he also mingles with judges, high ranking churchmen, country gentlemen, and even dukes and duchesses. Case made, I would hope.

            One further point on the picaresque, while the peripatetic novel may be considered picaresque in English, it is not picaresque in Spanish unless it is narrated in the first-person singular. The first word in Quevedo’s Buscón is ‘Yo’ / ‘I’ – “Yo, señor soy de Segovia.” / “I, sir, am from Segovia.” Then Pablos goes on to tell his own life story. On the other hand, the first-person narrator at the beginning of Don Quixote tells the story of the knight. He does not tell his own story, even though elements of his personal life are included within the knight’s tale.

            That said, elements of the picaresque do occur in the Quixote. The most important sequence can be found in DQI, XXII / 22, The freeing of the galley slaves. In this chapter, Don Quixote and Sancho meet a chain gang of low-class criminals who are en route to the coast to serve penal sentences chained to the oars of the King’s galleys. When Sancho tells his master that these men are forced, against their will, to serve in the galleys, Don Quixote sees an opportunity to employ his knightly skills – “this is a case for the exercising of my profession, for the redressing of outrages and the succouring and relieving of the wretched.”

            Don Quixote then asks each criminal in turn about the crimes they have committed. Big problem – in the same way that the goat herds have not understood a word of Don Quixote’s learned language, the knight is unable to understand the thieves’ slang of the galley slaves. There follows a series of misinterpretations. The first slave fell in love, the second had been singing, the third was short of a small sum of money, the fourth paraded the streets in state and on horse back, and the fifth had been caught up in an intricate tangle of relationships. Don Quixote cannot comprehend any of this and interprets each word in its literal, dictionary meaning.

            He doesn’t understand that the man in love was in love with someone else’s belongings, the singer had ‘sung’, ie confessed under torture, the third didn’t have enough money to bribe the judge, the fourth had been whipped through the streets, guilty of procuring, and possibly witchcraft, and the fifth had been involved in irregular sexual adventures with a wide range of people, some related and others not. Poor Don Quixote is baffled by this language.

            The sixth prisoner, the famous Gines de Pasamonte, is a different kettle of fish, for he has, in true picaresque fashion, written his own life story with his own fingers. Translated – he has written his own picaresque novel with himself in the starring role. When Don Quixote asks if the book is good, Gines replies that “it is so good … that Lazarillo de Tormes will have to look out, and so will everything else in that style …” “Is it finished?” Don Quixote asks him. “How can it be … if my life isn’t?” is the reply.  

            So, that is the story of Don Quixote’s encounter with the picaresque. It is a style that Cervantes tended to avoid, preferring at this stage the Italianate, the pastoral, the romance, and his own invention of the novel as a reinvention of the epic poem that can be written in prose. The picaresque was certainly a temptation for Cervantes, for he leaned towards that style from time to time in Don Quixote, and also in a couple of his exemplary novels (1612), namely Rinconete y Cortadillo and El Coloquio delosPerros, among others. That said, Don Quixote is certainly not a picaresque novel, in the Spanish sense of the word.

Picaresque Novels

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The Picaresque Novel
Wednesday Workshop
3 May 2017

The Picaresque Novel

             Think of a pendulum: at one end of the swing, we have the pastoral novel and the novel of chivalry. The knights errant meet shepherds and shepherdesses on their travels, and all are cultured and can read and write. The main characters, heroes and heroines, if you wish, express high ideals and maintain a cultured standard of thought and living. The knights, in particular, follow the path of chivalry and defend the poor and maidens in distress. The ladies, especially the shepherdesses, are all ‘as pure as driven snow’ and they go to their graves, in the immortal words of Miguel de Cervantes, ‘as virgin as the mothers who bore them’.

            At the other end of the pendulum swing and positioned there partly in contrast to the ‘perfect society’ of knights, shepherds, and shepherdesses, we find the picaresque novel. Most pícaros are men, though female pícaras do exist (la pícara Justina, for example), and the pícaro is an anti-hero. He writes in the first person singular and tells the story of his survival in the lower ranks of a corrupt and impoverished society.

            Wikipedia phrases it this way: “The picaresque novel (Spanish “picaresca,” from “pícaro,” for “rogue” or “rascal”) is a genre of prose fiction that depicts the adventures of a roguish hero or heroine of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society. Picaresque novels typically adopt a realistic style, with elements of comedy and satire. This style of novel originated in 16th-century Spain and flourished throughout Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. It continues to influence modern literature.”

            Lazarillo de Tormes, considered by many to be the first picaresque novel, was written in Spain and three editions appeared in 1554. Lazarillo is given by his mother to a blind man who agrees to look after the young boy in return for the boy’s services as a guide. Even today, a person who guides a blind man is still called a lazarillo in some places. The book describes the life of Lazarillo as he moves from master to master until he eventually establishes himself ‘at the peak of all happiness and the height of his career’ as the local town-crier, married to a cast-off woman with whom the celibate village priest has created three children.

             Lazarillo de Tormes, a book that never uses the term pícaro, establishes the basic rules for the genre. (1) It is an autobiography, or pseudo-autobiography, of the main character. (2) That character leads a peripatetic life, wandering from master to master, usually at the bottom end of society, but sometimes working in the kitchen or lower service of the great. (3) The picaresque novel also contains elements of humor and satire and in some cases, Guzmán de Alfarache, for example, has a moralizing purpose that is used to justify the immorality of the book.

            The church did not receive the picaresque novel well, especially when the satire and humor were aimed at the church. In the Lazarillo, for example, Lazarillo works for a seller of Papal Bulls who sets up an elaborate and deceitful charade in order to increase his sales. This charade involves a friend who poses as a doubter, is then cursed and goes into a fit, but recovers almost immediately with the blessing of the Papal Bull. Lazarillo de Tormes was censored by the Inquisition and appeared in an even shorter version that was called El Lazarillo Castigado, Lazarillo Punished, with all unwholesome references to the church removed.

            Perhaps the most famous picaresque novel, after Lazarillo, was El Buscón / The Swindler. It was written by Francisco de Quevedo in 1601 and circulated in manuscript form until it was published, illegally I should add, in 1627. The novel was so scandalous that it was denounced to the Inquisition and Quevedo often denied writing it. His intricate and heavily conceited style is inimitable, however, and the book contains several references to his own life. It is difficult imagining any other person as author.

            Wikipedia translates pícaro as ‘rogue’ or ‘rascal’ and this illustrates the pleasant and humorous scallywag style that the character often has. However, the darker, more murderous side of the pícaro emerges more clearly when ‘swindler’ (Penguin Translation) or a stronger term is used. In this fashion, the pícaro (rascal or rogue) can be associated with Tom Jones or Oliver Twist, while his darker, more reprehensible side may be associated with by Bill Sykes or Fagin himself.

            More important, perhaps, is the long life that the picaresque has had in Western Literature as the traveler, the journeyer, the observer, the young man who is ‘down and out’,  works his way across the land, surviving, adventuring and commentating.