T H E PI C A R E S Q U E

HARRY SIEBER
First published in 1977 by Methuen & Co Ltd
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The Picaresque

Harry Sieber
First published 1977
by Methuen & Co Ltd
11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4 EE
© 1977 Harry Sieber

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Contents

General Editor’s Preface

1 Prologue: some definitions
2 The picaresque in Spain: origins and definition
Lazarillo de Tormes: epistolary beginnings of the picaresque
Mateo Alemán: the picaresque as genre
Spanish descendants of the ‘Lazarillo’ and the ‘Guzmán’
The picaresque novel after Cervantes
3 The picaresque novel in Europe: a literary itinerary of the pícaro
Italy
Germany
France
England
The picaresque: genre and myth
4 Epilogue: pícaros in the Promised Land
Bibliography
Index
General Editor’s Preface
The volumes composing the Critical Idiom deal with a wide variety of key
terms in our critical vocabulary. The purpose of the series differs from that
served by the standard glossaries of literary terms. Many terms are
adequately defined for the needs of students by the brief entries in these
glossaries, and such terms do not call for attention in the present series. But
there are other terms which cannot be made familiar by means of compact
definitions. Students need to grow accustomed to them through simple and
straightforward but reasonably full discussions. The main purpose of this
series is to provide such discussions.
Many critics have borrowed methods and criteria from currently
influential bodies of knowledge or belief that have developed without
particular reference to literature. In our own century, some of them have
drawn on art-history, psychology, or sociology. Others, strong in a
comprehensive faith, have looked at literature and literary criticism from a
Marxist or a Christian or some other sharply defined point of view. The
result has been the importation into literary criticism of terms from the
vocabularies of these sciences and creeds. Discussions of such bodies of
knowledge and belief in their bearing upon literature and literary criticism
form a natural extension of the initial aim of the Critical Idiom.
Because of their diversity of subject-matter, the studies in the series vary
considerably in structure. But all authors have tried to give as full
illustrative quotation as possible, to make reference whenever appropriate
to more than one literature, and to write in such a way as to guide readers
towards the short-bibliographies in which they have made suggestions for
further reading.
John D. Jump
University of Manchester
1
Prologue: some defi nitions

Picaresque: ‘Belonging or relating to rogues or knaves: applied esp. to a

style of literary fiction dealing with the adventures of rogues, chiefly of
Spanish origin.’ OED

The word ‘picaresque’ seems to have shared the same fate as other literary,
critical and descriptive terms such as conceit, irony, satire, naturalism,
classicism and romanticism, in that attempts at precise definition have
produced more confusion than understanding. The Oxford English
Dictionary, while in no sense the ultimate authority, suggests three essential
characteristics which help to locate a point of departure. First, the
picaresque is a literary phenomenon, a work of fiction which is concerned
with the habits and lives of rogues. Secondly, it is a style of fiction, that is, a
kind or type of work which is distinguishable from other fictional styles.
And third, its origins are found in Spain, implying that it has a ‘history’
whose genesis can be located in space and time.
Few definitions of the picaresque have improved on the brief description
found in the OED. In 1895 Fonger de Haan (An Outline History of the
Novela Picaresca in Spain, not published until 1903) defined picaresque
fiction as ‘the autobiography of a pícaro, a rogue, and in that form a satire
upon the conditions and persons of the time that gives it birth’ (p. 1). He
makes two important additions to the OED account, seeing it as an
autobiography and its ‘style’ as a ‘form’ of satire, an idea recently taken up
and fully explored by Ronald Paulson in The Fictions of Satire, 1967. Soon
after de Haan had defended his dissertation at Johns Hopkins, Frank
Wadleigh Chandler presented his Ph.D. thesis at Columbia University. The
first part, ‘The Picaresque Novel in Spain’, was published with the title,
Romances of Roguery: An Episode in the History of the Novel, 1899.
Chandler’s book on the picaresque novel is still viewed, particularly by
non-Hispanists, as the best authority on the subject. His description of the
rogue narrator, the pícaro, is now a commonplace in literary criticism of the
picaresque:
The picaresque novel of the Spaniards presents a rogue relating his
adventures. He is born of poor and dishonest parents, who are not often
troubled with gracing their union by a ceremony, nor particularly pleased
at his advent. He comes up by hook or crook as he may. Either he enters
the world with an innate love of the goods of others, or he is innocent and
learns by hard raps that he must take care of himself or go to the wall. In
either case the result is much the same; in order to live he must serve
somebody, and the gains of service he finds himself obliged to augment
with the gains of roguery. So he flits from one master to another, all of
whom he outwits in his career, and describes to satirize in his narrative.
Finally, having run through a variety of strange vicissitudes, measuring
by his rule of roguery the vanity of human estates, he brings his story to a
close. (pp. 45–6)

Chandler’s characterization of the Spanish rogue is accurate for the most

part, although it actually defines an ‘ideal’ type of rogue rather than any
particular pícaro. This kind of generalization anticipates the attempt of
Stuart Miller (The Picaresque Novel, 1967) to define an ‘archetypal’
picaresque novel in terms of its most salient features, leaving little room to
consider the changing elements of the genre from country to country over
an extended period of time. Chandler’s definition, however general it may
be, clearly distinguishes the picaresque novel from a larger body of fiction
which he calls the ‘literature of roguery’. The latter includes criminal
biographies, beggar books, vocabularies of thieves’ cant, cony-catching
pamphlets and jest books. Very simply put, the picaresque as a narrative
genre, as distinct from these ‘anatomies’ of rogues, tricksters and beggars,
has both a plot and a single narrator. The subject-matter is often shared by
both traditions, but only in the picaresque novel is it shaped into an ‘artistic’
form and narrated from the viewpoint of the pícaro.
These conventional definitions of the picaresque are virtually forgotten
by more recent critics who tend to stretch the term to include ‘any novel in
which the hero takes a journey whose course plunges him into all sorts,
conditions and classes of men…’ (Walter Allen, The English Novel, 1954,
p. 18). Robert Alter (Rogue’s Progress, 1964) virtually repeats earlier
definitions whereas Claudio Guillén (Literature as System, 1971) distills the
picaresque narrative to the ‘confessions of a liar’ (p. 92). A. A. Parker
(Literature and the Delinquent, 1967) counters the confessional element,
claiming that the autobiographical viewpoint ‘is not essential; the
distinguishing feature … is the atmosphere of delinquency’ (p. 6). And Ihab
Hassan (Radical Innocence, 1961) goes so far as to deny even its Spanish
origins by seeing it as an English phenomenon. Christine J. Whitbourn (ed.,
Knaves and Swindlers, 1974) goes to the other extreme by locating the roots
of the picaresque in the fourteenth-century Spanish Libro de buen amor or
the fifteenth-century Catalan work, Lo spil, 0 libre de les dones.
It is obvious that a great deal of confusion still exists both in locating the
Spanish origins of the picaresque and in defining the extent to which the
term is applicable to fiction outside Spain. My purpose will be to clarify
these issues by approaching the picaresque in its strict sense as a literary
genre and then by following its itinerary outside Spain via ‘translations’ and
‘imitations’ of specific novels. I will thus spend a good deal of space
outlining and describing themes and plots in order to obtain a cluster of
‘picaresque conventions’. I will also stay close to the history of the genre by
weighting my discussions with dates and places of publication in order to
sketch a profile of the picaresque tradition. I will then attempt to define a
‘picaresque myth’, that is, a story, plot, or ‘situation’ which can be seen
working in certain nineteenth- and twentieth-century works. Here my
assumption is that reading them in a specific ‘mythic’ tradition will add to
their appreciation and understanding within the wider contexts of fiction.
My intention is constructive. If revitalized and properly understood, the
term ‘picaresque’ can still be of some use as a literary-critical category in
the general domain of the critical idiom. Finally, an anonymous
seventeenth-century reader referred to one Spanish picaresque novel as
being a mixture of ‘burlas y veras’ (‘jests and truths’), pointing out perhaps
the genre’s internal uneasy blend of humour and seriousness. My
interpretation will emphasize the latter at the expense of the former.
2
The picaresque in Spain: origins and defi nition

The English word ‘picaresque’ is borrowed from the Spanish picaresco

(Mateo Alemán, 1599) or from picaresca (Alfonso de Pimentel, c. 1587).
These first attestations in Spain are adjectival forms of the noun pícaro,
usually translated into English as ‘rogue, knave, sharper,’ into French as
‘gueux, voleur’ (‘beggar, thief), into German as ‘Schelm, Abenteurer’
(‘rogue, adventurer’) and into Italian as ‘pitocco, furbone’ (‘vagrant,
rogue’). Unfortunately, pícaro is a word whose etymology is uncertain and
whose semantic history is complex. Joan Corominas, having reviewed
several theories, concludes that it comes from some form of the verb picar
(‘to prick, puncture; nibble, bite’) which at some point came into contact
with thieves’ cant (germania) to give it the general meaning we ascribe to it
today. From there it made its way into the public linguistic domain. When
the word first appeared (1525) in the expression ‘pícaro de cozina’
(‘scullion’), however, it seemed to have nothing to do with the notion of
delinquency or immorality. The pícaro was involved in menial jobs and was
usually found in and around kitchens, stables or out on the streets as a
basket-carrier. This original meaning still existed much later when
Rinconete and Cortadillo, self-defined pícaros in Cervantes’ tale of the
same name, became ‘esportilleros’ (‘basket-carriers’) upon their arrival in
Seville. It was only c. 1545 that pícaro began to take on explicitly
pejorative connotations. Eugenio de Salazar’s Carta del Bachiller de
Arcadia (1548), the first reliably dated text to include the word in this sense,
contrasts the ‘pícaros de corte’ with the ‘cortesanos’ (‘courtiers’), referring
to the former as ‘ruines’ (‘wicked, low, vile’) and to the latter as ‘buenos’
(‘good, worthy’). Corominas correctly reminds us that implicit within this
semantic shift is a change in emphasis from the pícaro’s social situation to
his immoral and delinquent behaviour. It is interesting to note in passing
that even at this early stage, the ‘heroic’ courtier was being confronted by
the ‘anti-heroic’ pícaro, a point we will take up later.
The term pícaro should also be considered within the wider social and
historical contexts of the sixteenth century, a period of profound social
change. The Habsburg kings were committed to empire-building and waged
war on a scale that the world had never seen before. Vast armies of Spanish
pike-men (picas secas and/ or piqueros secos, from the verb picar) had to be
provisioned, garrisoned, transported and occasionally paid to defend
Spain’s far-flung territories. Geoffrey Parker has recently assessed the
difficulties the Spanish military faced in the late sixteenth century:

The increasing resort to criminals as a source of recruits can only have

accentuated the innate unruliness of the troops, especially when the men
were lodged in overcrowded private houses away from the supervision of
their officers. The soldiers soon came to exhibit the same picaresque
values which invaded Spanish society in the late sixteenth century:
idleness, brutality, and bravado, the thirst for gambling, the urge for
falsification. (p. 180)

The efficiency of the Spanish military decreased in the second half of the
century. The change is perhaps best illustrated by the history of the wars in
Flanders where Spanish troops were engaged off and on for eighty years
(1587–1659). Parker states that when Don John of Austria took command
of the Spanish armies in Flanders (1576), the troops had diminished in
numbers from 60,000 to 11,000 men through death, disease and desertion:
‘The Army had lost 80 per cent of its men in eight months’ (p. 207).
Deserting soldiers joined the ranks of other countries, but many attempted
to return home, begging and stealing on the way. It is possible that some of
the deserters carried their previous military title of piquero with them into
‘civilian’ life.
Alfonso de Pimentel, a young lieutenant who accompanied the Duke of
Alba’s military expedition to Flanders in 1567, wrote about his experiences
in an epic poem, Guerras civiles de Flandes( The Civil Wars of Flanders).
He composed this work over twenty years later; as a result, his use of the
word pícaro may reflect its late sixteenth-century usage. None the less, he
explicitly identifies pícaros with the beggars he encountered during his
previous military service, comparing them to the French ‘gueuz’ or ‘guses’
as he spelled the older form of gueux. In the context of his poem pícaros are
real as well as false beggars. They also are viewed as evil-doers, mischief-
makers and robbers. What is important about de Pimentel’s remarks is not
so much their connection with Flanders as the fact that most ‘literary’
pícaros become at one time or another beggars and vagrants during their
careers.
In the same general region of Flanders was Picardy, a name whose
Spanish form ‘Picardía’ was synonymous with roguery. Spanish pícaro,
Corominas informs us, could have developed at least phonetically from
French picard (a native of Picardy), thus possibly echoing the pattern of the
Spanish word for Hungary: Hungrialhungaro; Picardía/ pícaro. There is no
concrete evidence that such a development took place, but the fact that both
Picardy and Piedmont were traditionally the areas of Franco-Spanish
conflict over many years lends some support to such an explanation.
Sebastian de Covarrubias, a Spanish lexicographer of the early seventeenth
century, under the heading ‘Picardia’ states that ‘at some point a few poor
people might have come from there to Spain because of their poverty,
bringing us the name.’
Organized guilds of beggars were a European phenomenon, and one
etymological theory of the word pícaro attempts to link it to the word
bigardo, a later development of the name of a religious sect, Pyghard, some
of whose members seemed to form a mendicant order. Such a development
is especially weak – at least etymologically – when compared to the
Picardía/ pícaro explanation. There was, as we have seen, a strong and
persistent semantic connection between beggars and pícaros. Vagrancy was
not limited to northern Europe alone. Fernand Braudel eloquently describes
the Spanish scene:

In Spain, vagrants cluttered the roads, stopping at every town: students

breaking bounds and forsaking their tutors to join the swelling ranks of
picardia, adventurers of every hue, beggars and cutpurses. They had their
favourite towns and within them their headquarters: San Lucar de
Barrameda, near Seville; the Slaughterhouse in Seville itself; the Puerta
del Sol in Madrid. The mendigos formed a brotherhood, a state with its
own ferias and sometimes met together in huge gatherings. Along the
roads to Madrid moved a steady procession of poor travellers, civil
servants without posts, captains without companies, humble folk in
search of work, trudging behind a donkey with empty saddle bags, all
faint with hunger and hoping that someone, in the capital, would settle
their fate. (II, 740)

The investigations of some ‘legal’ historians suggest that as European

society changed in the sixteenth century, attitudes toward vagrancy and
criminality also changed. Even a cursory glance at the growing number and
frequency of promulgated laws against criminals indicates a hardening
attitude which seems to peak toward the end of the century. Joel Samaha,
although dealing exclusively with Elizabethan England, points out that

as early as the sixteenth century, contemporaries claimed that the roots of

crime lay in the soil of an unstable society. Vagabonds and criminals they
believed, were stamped from the same mold. Idleness bred poverty, and
poverty spawned crime according to contemporary commentators –
English and continental alike. Criminals, they claimed, stemmed from the
poverty-stricken ranks of decayed gentlemen, uprooted peasants, ruined
craftsmen, unpaid soldiers, and unemployed or underpaid laborers. (p.
112)

It is difficult, of course, to determine if reporting techniques or actual rising

crime resulted in a growing awareness – and fear – of lawbreakers. Samaha
suggests that both were important factors:

Hardening community attitudes toward lawlessness, swelling ranks of

law-enforcement personnel, and revamped machinery of justice have at
least two meanings. They not only mean more and better records of
crime, but they also represent a change in society’s response to a real
increase in deviance. (p. 112)

The emphasis of the picaresque on poverty, delinquency, ‘upward

mobility’ (self-improvement of the pícaro), travel as an escape from
despair, social satire of a system unresponsive to the needs and desires of a
growing active community of ‘have-nots,’ all reflect the socio-historical
contexts profiled by Parker, Braudel and Samaha. The ‘literature of
roguery’ has always been of interest to literate society but it reached the
proportion of an international obsession precisely at the end of the sixteenth
century. As we will see, the liber vagatorum tradition, criminal biographies
and cony-catching pamphlets found an enthusiastic audience, especially
during the first half of the seventeenth century. Our special interest is with a
particular kind of narrative which first appeared in mid-sixteenth-century
Spain, whose full flowering as a literary genre, however, took place almost
fifty years later.
The etymological, semantic, social and historical references mentioned
above provide the contexts for an understanding and an appreciation of the
picaresque novel, but tell us virtually nothing about it as a genre of
narrative fiction. The uncertainty surrounding the origin of the word and the
figure of the pícaro fortunately does not apply to the ‘birth’ of the genre
itself. In 1599 Luis Sanchez, an enterprising Madrid book publisher,
brought out editions of Lazarillo de Tormes, Castigado. Agora nueuamente
impresso y emendado and of the Primera parte de la vida de Guzmán de
Alfarache, atalaya de la vida humana (Lazarillo de Tormes, Corrected.
Now newly printed and emended; The First Part of the Life of Guzman de
Alfarache, Watch-Tower of Man’s Life). The first book had already been
published anonymously in 1554; Mateo Alemán ( 1547- 1616? ) was the
author of the second.
That these narratives were seen as constituting one ‘type’ of fiction is
established in the first part of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quij ote de la
Mancha (Madrid, 1605), chapter 22, where Cervantes has his knight-errant
encounter a group of ‘unfortunate ones who, much against their will, were
being taken where they did not wish to go’. Sancho Panza identifies them as
‘galley slaves’. Among them was one Ginés de Pasamonte, a convicted
criminal who had written his autobiography during a previous sentence in
the galleys. Don Quixote’s interview with Ginés contains one of the earliest
reactions to the then ‘new’ narrative genre. Don Quixote wants to know
about Ginés’ life, and the rogue responds by saying ‘…“If you want to
know anything about my life, know that I am Ginés de Pasamonte whose
life story [‘vida’] has been written down by these fingers that you see
here”.’ The commissary who is guarding the prisoners intrudes to tell Don
Quixote that Ginés has ‘pawned’ his book for ‘two hundred reales’, only to
have Ginés respond by placing a value on it of ‘two hundred ducats’. Don
Quixote asks if the book is that valuable:
‘It is so good,’ replied Ginés, ‘that it will cast into the shade Lazarillo
de Tormes and all others of that sort [“género”] that have been or will be
written…’
‘And what is the title of the book?’ asked Don Quixote.
‘The Life of Ginés de Pasamonte.’
‘Is it finished?’
‘How could it be finished,’ said Ginés ‘when my life is not finished as
yet? What I have written thus far is an account of what happened to me
from the time I was born up to the last time that they sent me to the
galleys.’ (trans. Samuel Putnam, Modern Library, pp. 172–3)

Within this exchange between Don Quixote and Ginés de Pasamonte,

Cervantes focuses on three fundamental elements of Ginés’ Vida: (1) he
defines it as the autobiography of a convicted criminal, (2) written in the
pattern of Lazarillo de Tormes and ‘all others of that sort’, and (3) he refers
to its open-ended ‘unfinished’ nature. A fourth element, although not
specifically connected with the autobiography itself, is the language used by
criminals. In the course of his interviews with the other prisoners, Don
Quixote is required to have translations of the thieves’ cant used to describe
their misdeeds. Clearly, however, the most important words in the encounter
are contained in Ginés’ statement that the written form of his life is similar
in nature to those of Lazarillo and others. Ginés’ status as a criminal who
has given literary form to his life while in the galleys is a thinly veiled
reference to the Guzmán de Alfarache, whose narrator likewise composed
his autobiography after becoming a galley slave.
Even though the Lazarillo seems to have been read frequently during the
second half of the sixteenth century, it was reprinted only once, and this
time in the ‘chastized’ or corrected version of Juan López de Velasco in
1573. As a result of this inquisitorial purification, chapters 4 and 5 were
deleted along with other paragraphs and sentences containing anticlerical
satire. Between 1573 and 1599 no reprints even of the corrected version
were made available in Spain, an absence reflected perhaps in the remarks
of the editor of the Milan 1587 edition who referred to it as ‘forgotten and
worm-eaten with age’. It soon found a new lease of literary life, as it were,
with the publication of Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache, which, in the
words of Claudio Guillén, ‘was one of the first authentic best sellers in the
history of printing’ (p. 143). Before 1605, at least twenty-five editions of
the first part of Alemán’s book were printed in Spain and abroad. As
impressive as the public’s response was to the Guzmán, a more important,
and until recently little recognized fact, lay hidden by its popularity. The
Lazarillo began to be reprinted, not in its original 1554 version, but in Juan
de Velasco’s corrected text. Guzmán, then, resurrected the Lazarillo. Luis
Sánchez’s 1599 edition appeared nine weeks after the first part of Alemán’s
novel was released for sale. Moreover, Alemán’s publishers in Barcelona
and Z aragoza also were selling editions of the Lazarillo by the end of the
same year, obviously exploiting the Guzmán’s phenomenal success. Nine
separate editions of the Lazarillo were in circulation by 1603. These
printers and publishers were instrumental in establishing the picaresque
novel as a distinct literary form in the minds of readers and authors alike at
the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The picaresque novel as a genre emerges, as Cervantes clearly perceived,
out of the confluence of the Lazarillo and of the autobiography of a
criminal. It is only through the association with the Guzmán, then, that the
Lazarillo can be called a picaresque novel. But it must also be remembered
that the Lazarillo which was ‘rediscovered’ in late sixteenth-century Spain
is not the novel we read today. Viewing it as a ‘precursor’, ‘prototype’, or
as the first picaresque novel is a reading demanded by literary history,
which seeks to link it through a cluster of ‘picaresque conventions’ to a
larger tradition. Our purpose is to review the 1554 text from the standpoint
of its picaresque nature, reminding ourselves frequently that such an
approach limits a full understanding and appreciation of the Lazarillo as a
book sui generis.
It is only through the association with the Guzmán that the Lazarillo can
be picaresque. Lazarillo, who narrates his story as the adult Lázaro, never
refers to himself as a pícaro. How can he when he is attempting to pass
himself off as a ‘respectable’ person, as a man of worth? There are,
however, several elements which are shared by Alemán’s much longer
narrative and which have tended to make the Lazarillo a paradigm of the
tradition: the first-person narration, the seemingly unstructured, episodic
plot, Lazarillo’s role as a ‘servant of many masters’, his dishonourable birth
and poverty, his concern with honour and his desire for respectability, to
become an ‘hombre de bien’. Lázaro as narrator is a satirist, pointing out
the hypocrisy of ‘society’ by which he is victimized. But, more importantly,
he is an ironist. By overstating and emphasizing the ‘sins’ of others, he
attempts to portray himself as a blameless man, no better, but certainly no
worse than his neighbours.

Lazarillo de Tormes: epistolary beginnings of the picaresque

Lázaro’s Vida is written in the form of an epistle. He has been asked by an
unknown person, simply referred to as ‘vuestra merced’ (‘your grace’,
‘your honour’), to respond to rumours that are circulating in the city of
Toledo concerning his unseemly behaviour. It has come to ‘your grace’s’
attention that Lázaro is a willing participant in a ménage-à -trois: his wife is
the local archpriest’s concubine. Lázaro’s response is his autobiography. He
insists that in order to show ‘your grace’ how he managed to find himself in
such a situation, which he calls a ‘caso’ (‘case’, ‘matter’), he must begin at
the beginning, that is, he must narrate his experiences from birth to his final
‘present’ position in life. In essence, the oral language of gossip threatens
his comfortable life, and in order to protect himself he resorts to a written
response as his ultimate defence. He becomes an author.
Lázaro is the son of a thief and a woman of questionable morals. He was
born in a mill on the river Tormes which flows beside the university city of
Salamanca. Forced to leave home when his father dies and his mother is no
longer able to support him, he is turned over to a blind beggar who treats
him cruelly. It is through the beggar’s cruelty that young Lazarillo learns to
fend for himself. He begins as a simpleton, naive in the ways of the world,
and is violently and abruptly brought out of his simplicity by letting the
blind beggar smash his head against a stone bull. At the end of the chapter
he pays in kind by tricking the beggar into jumping into a stone pillar, a feat
he accomplishes by becoming a clever liar. Thereafter he immediately takes
up with a miserly priest who nearly starves him to death. Lazarillo attempts
to use his recently developed art as a liar against the priest. Hunger has
driven him to steal from the priest’s chest of ‘holy’ bread, and after
inventing a story which blames the steadily increasing thefts on rats, he is
able to satisfy his appetite at will. His success is his undoing. After
obtaining a key to the chest from a travelling tinker, he hides it in his mouth
at night for safe-keeping. While he is sleeping one night, his breath passes
through its opening, awakening the priest. Lazarillo pays for his unwitting
mistake as his master pummels him half to death. His third master, a squire,
values honour above all things. Lazarillo believes at first that he has found a
good master who will provide him with food and shelter. He discovers,
however, that the squire’s honour consists only in his honourable
appearance. And now that his hunger is more intense than before, he is
reduced to begging for both his master and himself. He learns that honour
exists in the eyes of the beholder only and that an illusion of respectability
and worth functions well as long as the fiction can be sustained. For the first
time in his life, Lazarillo is abandoned by his master as the squire skips
town when his true worth is learned.
Lazarillo’s other masters are a Mercedarian friar, a fraudulent pardoner, a
tambourine painter, a cathedral chaplain in Toledo and a constable.
Gradually he becomes his own man by working for himself rather than for
others. First he enters into a contract with the chaplain who puts him in
charge of a donkey, four jugs and a whip, and Lazarillo earns enough
money after four years – and after paying his expenses – to buy a ‘good
secondhand suit of clothes’ (p. 93). Later he becomes the constable’s
assistant but finds the work too dangerous when he is chased by some
escaped criminals. Finally he attains the position of town crier in Toledo
‘with the help of some friends and other people’ (p. 95), thus reaching the
‘height’ of his good fortune. Still not satisfied, he agrees to marry the
archpriest’s ‘maid’ because he has realized that ‘good and profitable things
could come from a man like him’ (p. 98). But almost immediately Lazarillo
becomes the object of gossip and scorn. The novel ends at this point,
coming full circle in the sense that he has married a woman like his mother
and is still at the mercy of another, the archpriest, and above him, ‘your
grace’.
Lázaro’s life has been described as the story of a young boy growing into
manhood. His struggles reveal the hypocrisy of a certain sector of society
from the ‘outside’. It is told in a humorous, sometimes bitter tone, but in the
end, as paradoxical as it may seem, Lázaro emerges as the master and
society as the slave because he is the one who manipulates the language and
selects the episodes with which to narrate his life. While the novel may be
partly drawn from folk literature (the blind beggar and his servant) or from
Italian fiction (the fifth chapter is said to be taken from Masuccio
Salernitano’s II Novellino), it is in its totality a ‘new’ kind of fiction both in
execution and meaning. In R. O. Jones’ words:

No previous narrative offers what this one does: a portrait of a child in

the process of becoming a man, an account of how he is moulded
imperceptibly by the example of others, so that when we realise with a
shock that his childish innocence has gone for good we cannot decide
when and where the change took place. (p. 71)

The process of Lazarillo’s growth to manhood is indeed a ‘new’ subject

for fiction, but as previously mentioned, his autobiography is also ‘new’ in
the sense that it simultaneously tells the story of how he becomes an author.
In the Prologue to his report to ‘your grace’, Lázaro contrasts two kinds of
honour. The first is that which comes with noble birth and lineage and
belongs to those who are favoured by fortune. The other is that which can
be earned through hard work and merit. Lázaro’s questionable ancestry
denies him inherited honour, and so through misfortune he falls into the
second category. But is there honour in this other direction? The author of
the Lazarillo is reformulating a Spanish Renaissance debate about honour
which was most clearly outlined by Antonio de Torquemada in his
Colloquios satíricos (Mondoñedo, 1553), a very influential work of the
time. Torquemada asks which is the ‘truest honour, that which is gained
through valour and merit or that which proceeds from one’s ancestors?’ His
answer is that honour comes from virtue and not from appearances or self-
esteem. ‘Bad’ honour is the opposite of Christian humility and should be
avoided at all costs. Lázaro, in his own perverse way, thinks likewise except
for the important fact that ‘virtue’ for him is defined as that which profits
him most. ‘Honra y provecho’ (‘honour and profit’) go hand in hand in
Lázaro’s world. The orthodox concepts of good and evil are turned inside
out.
Lázaro invokes the name of Cicero to support his view that honour can
be earned. He will in effect become another Cicero in attempting to gain
praise and fame by writing his book. With tongue in cheek he seeks the
‘good’ honour of Torquemada because writing is after all hard work, as he
explicitly states in the Prologue:
… writing is hardly a simple thing to do. But since writers go ahead with
it, they want to be rewarded, not with money but with people seeing and
reading their works, and if there is something worthwhile in them, they
would like some praise, (p. 3)

It is not a coincidence that Cicero’s name is mentioned in this context. In

Torquemada’s Colloquios, as Fernando Lázaro Carreter recently reminded
us, one of the interlocutors brings up Sallust’s accusation that Cicero came
from ‘low and obscure ancestors and from modest and unworthy parents’.
Cicero’s alleged response, according to Torquemada, was that the ‘virtue’ of
his works had produced his famous reputation and because of this he was
worthy of more honour than those who had inherited it. This is precisely
Lázaro’s situation, for not only will he save himself from the rumours, but
simultaneously he will gain an even ‘higher’ Ciceronian honour by writing
his book. The phrase quoted by Lázaro in the Prologue, ‘honour promotes
the arts’, is reversed to mean that Lázaro’s artistry will create his honour.
In order to become like Cicero, Lázaro must acquire the art of the orator,
of the manipulator of language. If we look beneath the surface of his
‘picaresque’ adventures, we find that each of them teaches him something
different about the nature of language, especially oral language. From the
blind beggar he learns the magic quality of words: they produce money
from unsuspecting almsgivers. From the priest who says mass everyday,
Lazarillo perceives that his ‘sacred’ words bring forth money as well as
food. From the squire he learns that honour is as ‘real’ as the language used
to create it. But the most important lesson he learns is from the pardoner,
whose salesmanship involves ‘all sorts of ruses and underhanded tricks’ (p.
81). In essence, the pardoner is a salesman who has mastered completely
the art of speaking and persuasion. His ecclesiastical rhetoric is so polished
that through a series of carefully staged tricks and a masterfully delivered
sermon, his congregation is totally deceived into buying his pardons. The
fame of one of his false miracles spreads to neighbouring villages where the
local ‘naï ve’ populace is waiting to be deceived into massive purchases.
This episode has been called superfluous to the novel. It is, on the
contrary, central to Lázaro’s intention to ‘sell’ his book to ‘your grace’.
Lázaro, like the pardoner, faces a sceptical audience. If he is unsuccessful in
obtaining the sympathy and support of ‘your grace’, he will have no
defence against the ugly but true rumours of his neighbours in Toledo. His
problem is how to acknowledge the truth of these rumours yet escape their
consequences by portraying himself as the innocent victim of his past
experiences. His understanding of the power of language is put to its
ultimate test. While disclosing but simultaneously ‘blinding’ the reader into
accepting his dishonourable situation, he is able to sell himself and thus to
survive. His own written text is analogous to the papal indulgence in that it
too produces blindness while communicating the truth of its fiction.
The real purpose of Lázaro’s autobiography is clear. ‘Your grace’ is not
interested in the lowly town crier out of mere curiosity. He is concerned
with his own honour. The archpriest of San Salvador is his ‘friend and
servant’ (p. 98), Lázaro notes; he is also Lázaro’s friend and business
partner. Lázaro implies – and not very subtly – that ‘your grace’ is involved
in the scandal by association, and if he cares for his reputation, he will put
an end to the gossip. The complicity woven by Lázaro’s linguistic artistry
points to the ‘reality’ of a social order which exists only on a foundation of
deceit and fraud. If ‘truth’ were allowed to survive, the social structure
would collapse under its weight. Lázaro’s discovery of language as the
basis of social reality is also his discovery of the full implication of himself
as the ‘voice’ of Toledo. We are no more, no less, than the language we
speak and write.
Lázaro’s attempt to remake society in his own image is a logical but
perverse development of the Renaissance idea of the ‘dignity of man’. His
gift of speech, while indeed defining him as a man, is manipulated to insert
him in a community so obsessed with honour and appearance that it is
unable to see the illusory nature of its value system. Lázaro’s self-willed
deception at the end of the novel places him firmly in such a society, but his
irony and cynicism communicated through his language guarantee his
ability to manipulate those around him as he has manipulated his Vida. Such
a cynical view of life will become one of the fundamental hallmarks of later
pícaro-authors.
Literary historians continue to debate whether or not the sudden
appearance of a book like the Lazarillo was a reaction to the Greek,
chivalric and pastoral romances which flourished at about the same time,
that is, whether the Lazarillo constitutes a ‘counter genre’ within the
framework of sixteenth-century Spanish fiction. Historians especially
persist in evaluating it as a social document which allegedly reproduces to
one degree or another the ‘reality’ of the age preceding Spain’s political and
economic decline. As we have seen, however, it was Cervantes who first
placed the Lazarillo in its proper literary-historical perspective at the turn
of the seventeenth century. And it was the Guzmán de Alfarache which
provided Cervantes with the context to enable him to see the Lazarillo as
part of a larger tradition.

Mateo Alemá n: the picaresque as genre

In 1593 Mateo Alemán was appointed by the Crown to investigate reports
that galley slaves were being mistreated in the quicksilver mines of
Almaden. Part of his final report to the government was probably based on
face-to-face interviews with the prisoners. This experience must have left a
lasting impression, for in 1598 we find him corresponding with Cristobal
Perez de Herrera, one of the most important social reformers of the time.
Perez de Herrera was concerned with the widespread poverty and vagrancy
in Spain, a problem he had attempted to alleviate for several years. Out of
his work came the famous Discurso del amparo de los legitimos pobres
( Dissertation on the Protection of Genuine Paupers), Madrid, 1598.
Alemán’s letter included references to what had already been done to help
the poor, but more relevant for our purpose, he mentioned that when he
revealed the tricks of false beggars in the Guzmán, his primary interest was
to call the public’s attention to the plight of real paupers who were in
desperate need of help. Alemán’s firsthand knowledge of prison life, his
interviews with the Almaden galley slaves and his close association with
serious efforts to deal with poverty supplied him with ample ‘raw’ data for
his narrative. That he used any of this material is a disputed point. In any
case his major problem was to structure it into a literary work, to give it
‘form’. His recourse to the Lazarillo as a model is often accepted as fact,
although there is no hard evidence that he had it in mind when he began the
composition of the Guzmán.
Alemán divided and published his novel in two parts (1599, 1604), each
consisting of three books. The symmetry reflected in the arrangement of
chapters, books and parts extends to the ‘content’ of the narrative as well.
The first part traces Guzmán’s progress from birth to his chosen career as a
pícaro. The second takes up where he refuses to mend his ways, includes
his steadily worsening situation – the high point of his life as a delinquent –
and ends with his arrest, punishment and ‘repentance’ of past crimes.
Another structuring element of the novel is its narrative viewpoint. Because
the Guzmán is an autobiography like the Lazarillo, there are two temporal
perspectives, one serving as a framework for the other. Guzmán, the much
older narrator, recounts his past life as a character. The entire book consists
of ‘picaresque’ episodes, but they are punctuated with the narrator’s
digressions and commentaries. According to another viewpoint, however,
these ‘interruptions’ exist first and are illustrated by examples, that is, by
the picaresque adventures. These viewpoints have generated two
interpretations of the reading of the novel. On the one hand, the Guzmán
has been considered as principally an ‘immoral’ work whose adventures
revel in the humour and the ‘low’ life of the pícaro. On the other hand, the
work has been described as moralistic, praising the ‘good’ life by
condemning Guzmán’s delinquent behaviour as a character. If we are what
Alemán calls the ‘discreto lector’ (‘enlightened reader’), we should
penetrate the humour and entertainment of the picaresque episodes to profit
from the serious didactic intention of the book. If, on the other hand, we
are, or choose to be, the ‘vulgo lector’ (‘unenlightened reader’, overly
critical), we concentrate on Guzmán’s roguish life without extracting more
than vicarious pleasure.
Despite several efforts to establish one reading over the other, the
‘correct’ interpretation remains ambiguous. Some readers insist on seeing
Guzmán’s final penitence in an ironic light, claiming that his stated
intention to change his life is simply another picaresque lie. His decision to
be a virtuous person in the last chapter is a trick to escape from the galleys
and not self-reform. However, it is most likely, based on what we know
about Alemán’s life, his concern for social reform and his Counter-
Reformation attitudes, that Guzmán’s repentance is to be taken seriously.
Whatever the genuine interpretation may be, the book was and is still read
in both ways. Soon after its publication, readers referred to it as the Libro
del pícaro, indicating that a considerable seventeenth-century audience was
not as concerned with its moral values and doctrinal teachings as with its
implied invitation to live vicariously the life of a rogue. Alemán, in the
introduction to the second part, admitted that his book had been so
‘misread’, and possibly as a consequence, the second part contains many
more ‘moral’ digressions than the first.
The Guzmán, like the Lazarillo, is on the surface the story of a lad born
in dishonourable circumstances who attempts to better his position in life.
He was born in San Juan de Alfarache near Seville, the illegitimate son of a
renegade Christian and a woman of easy virtue. After his father’s death,
poverty forces Guzmán to make his way to Madrid. He takes part in several
‘picaresque’ exploits during the journey and arrives ‘hecho pícaro’, already
a rogue.
Guzmán’s role as a pícaro in Madrid is of special significance. This is the
first time in any literary text that the figure of the pícaro as such is given a
full description and definition. Chapter 2 of Book II begins with the
following summary, as translated by James Mabbe: ‘How Guzman de
Alfarache leaving his Host, went begging to Madrid; and comming thither,
how he set himselfe to learne to play the Rogue, and to beare a Basket;
where by the way he discourseth of Hunger, of Beggerie; and of Honour
which hurteth the soule’ (I, 249). The ‘Host’ to whom Guzmán refers is his
master until he decides to leave him because he ‘was no better (to speake
the best of it) than an Inne-keepers Boy, which is some-what worse than a
blind-man’ (ibid.). Mabbe’s translation of the final part of Guzmán’s remark
unfortunately is incorrect. The Spanish text reads: ‘era mozo de ventero,
que es peor que de ciego’ (ed. F. Rico, p. 257). Guzmán says in reality that
he was an innkeeper’s boy which is worse than being a blindman’s servant,
thus seeming to echo Lazarillo’s initial adventure. Whether or not Alemán
consciously alludes to the Lazarillo is impossible to say, but it is remarkable
that Lazarillo’s life as a beggar’s assistant is the starting point of Guzmán’s
career as a pícaro.
Guzmán quickly spends the money he has ‘gotten in a good warre’, is
forced to beg, and is ultimately required to sell the clothes off his back. His
clothing is especially important to him because it identifies him in the eyes
of others: ‘… when I came to Madrid, I look’t like one that had come from
the Oare, or some gentile Rower returned lately from the Gallies, I was so
lightly clad…’ (I, 250). Guzmán, as the ‘petitent’ thief and galley slave
writing his own life, compares himself to what he will eventually become.
He can find no employment because he looks like a criminal: ‘They did
thinke, that I was some roguish little Thiefe, and that if they should take me
in, I would filch some thing from them, and betake mee to my heeles when I
had done’ (I, 251). But Guzmán is not officially a pícaro yet. Only after
seeing his desperate state does he begin to ‘follow the Trade de la Florida
Picardia’ (ibid.), which consists in ‘exercising all your Cony-catching
trickes, knavish prankes, fine feates, with slight of hand, and whatsoever
Rogueries come within the compasse of that prowling office’ (ibid.). Some
of these ‘feates’ include standing in soup lines for free meals, learning to be
a card-sharper, stealing, and carrying baskets. He exults in his freedom,
serving only himself for the most part without having to engage in hard
physical labour:

What a fine kind of life was it, what a dainty and delicate thing, without
Thimble, Thred, or Needle; without Pinsers, Hammer, or Wimble, or any
other Mechanicall Instrument whatsoever, more than one onely bare
Basket; like unto those of your Brethren of the Order de Anton Martin,
(though unlike to them in their goodnesse of life, and solitary retiredness)
I had gotten me an Office whereby to live: and such a kind of Office, as
seemed to be a bit without a bone; a backe, without a burthen; a merry
kind of Occupation, and free from all manner of trouble and vexation. (I,
254)

Guzmán survives at the expense of society. He is a parasite, complaining of

the great burden of honour, ‘vaine’ honour, in whose name men sacrifice
their lives. It is the older Guzmán, however, whose voice both criticizes the
honour-monger and praises the man ‘that neither knowes what Honour
meanes, nor seekes after it, nor hath any thing to do with this Titulary toy’
(I, 255).
The young Guzmán soon leaves for Toledo where he buys elegant
clothing and attempts to pass himself off as a gentleman of means. But he is
quickly found out and is forced to leave. Later he joins a group of soldiers
and decides to accompany them to Italy where he intends to make the
acquaintance of his father’s ‘noble’ and wealthy relatives in Genoa. They
see through his schemes and cast him out. Afterwards, Guzmán is worse off
than ever and takes up his earlier profession as a beggar on his way to
Rome. He learns all kinds of tricks to extract money from unsuspecting
victims, one of whom, a cardinal, takes pity on his false wounds and invites
him to be his servant. Guzmán steals from the cardinal, promptly losing his
money by gambling it away. The cardinal is the only good master he has
had and he rejects him in favour of working for the French ambassador,
whose immoral life is more to Guzmán’s liking. At this point Alemán
inserts an Italianate tale into the narrative, bringing the 1599 first part to a
close.
In the second part, Guzmán serves the ambassador well but fails when he
attempts to emulate his master’s success with women. Leaving Rome, he
passes through Florence, Siena, Bologna and Milan on his return to Genoa.
Along the way he amasses a good fortune through theft and trickery and
returns to Genoa where he takes vengeance on his relatives and departs for
Spain. In Madrid he becomes a merchant and marries but loses both his
wife and his fortune. Guzmán travels to Alcala de Henares to study for the
priesthood at the university. His intention is far from religious; he chooses
the priestly life to find material security. This career also fails. After
marrying a prostitute who subsequently abandons him, he returns to Seville
where he is caught stealing from his final employer, a wealthy woman.
Guzmán is arrested, convicted and sentenced to the galleys. While serving
his time, he ‘repents’ and determines to live a virtuous life from that point
onward. He now writes the memoirs of his finished criminal life.
Alemán’s pícaro differs radically from Lazarillo de Tormes. Lazarillo is
never a hardened criminal. The only time he breaks the law is when he is
forced to beg to feed himself and the squire. This criminal activity is
minimal compared to the countless thefts and frauds perpetrated by
Guzmán. Guzmán serves many more masters than does Lazarillo. Both
characters attend the ‘school of hard knocks,’ but Guzmán receives a formal
university education, ‘having (by his study) come to be a good Latinist,
Rhetorician, and Grecian … [going] … forward in his Studies, with purpose
to professe the state of Religion’ (Alemán in ‘A Declaration for the Better
Understanding of this Booke,’ I, 19). Alemán educates Guzmán to justify
the ‘Tracts of Doctrine’ he puts in his mouth. Alemán also enlarges the
world of his rogue. Lazarillo travels from Salamanca to Toledo; Guzmán’s
itinerary takes him from Seville, across Spain, through Italy to Rome. Not
only are some of the major themes of the Lazarillo modified and expanded,
but its size and scope under Alemán’s pen grow to mammoth proportions.
In Francisco Rico’s recent edition of both works, the Lazarillo fills seventy-
five pages whereas the Guzmán extends to eight hundred and twenty. The
Guzmán is encyclopedic in a Renaissance sense too. Its narrative is inflated
with learned discourses, esoteric knowledge (a discussion of the
Pythagorean ‘Y’, for instance), interpolated Italianate novels and an
extensive series of satires against money, honour, justice and a multitude of
social types: women, judges, notaries, lawyers, doctors, bankers,
innkeepers, false beggars, to name only a few. Nearly all this material, as
well as the ‘Tracts of Doctrine’, is contained in Guzmán’s digressions.
Alemán, unlike the author of the Lazarillo, does not consistently feature
the shortcomings of the Roman Catholic Church. Some readers have
suggested that since Guzmán’s ‘conversion’ is a religious one, and that
since the cardinal is virtually the only ‘good’ character in the novel, Alemán
eschews critical commentary on those abuses described in the Lazarillo.
With its heavy emphasis on the doctrines of original sin, the saving power
of grace and the concept of free will, Maurice Molho has described the
novel not as the ‘life’ of a criminal, but as the ‘life’ of a criminal’s soul. In
this interpretation the Guzmán can indeed be called a ‘confession’
structured around a worldly ‘pilgrimage’ with Rome as the spiritual
destination. However, this religious and moral framework of the Guzmán
should not be over-stressed. It may be a moral work without being
doctrinally dogmatic because, as J. A. Jones has recently argued, ‘it
attempts to draw attention to basic conflicts and tensions of human life, and
tries to establish the need for individuals and for society in general to
confront these problems by constant adherence to truthful and responsible
behaviour’ (Knaves and Swindlers, p. 46). In a ‘secular’ vein, Alemán’s
obsessive attack on what could be called loosely a budding ‘bourgeois’
society concentrates on the corrupting power of money on all those persons
associated with it: merchants, bankers, lawyers and the ‘nobility’. From this
perspective, Molho has called the book a ‘violent anti-capitalist indictment,
without doubt the most violent that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
aristocratic Europe produced against money, banking and commerce…’ (p.
xiv). The pícaro, as Alemán defines him, is the product of poverty and of a
social value system which prohibits him from being anything else. Both
Lazarillo’s and Guzmán’s real crimes were having been born into the world
as ‘losers’, doomed to failure from the beginning in their attempts to create
and to sustain that myth of ‘honour’ for which they sacrificed their spiritual
lives.

Spanish descendants of the ‘Lazarillo’ and the ‘Guzmá n’

It was the combined popularity and publication of the Lazarillo and the
Guzmán which generated imitations, emulations and parodies of the new
genre. The first part of the Guzmán was followed by a ‘false’ second part,
written by ‘Mateo Lujan de Sayavedra, native of Seville’. In reality Lujan
was the Valencian lawyer, Juan Martí. Martí published his sequel in
Valencia in 1602, immediately capturing the audience created by Alemán.
Between 1602 and 1603 fourteen editions were printed, only one appearing
in 1604, the year Alemán’s second part was published in Lisbon. In short,
Martí exploited the Guzmán’s instant success, apparently to make a quick
profit from the explosive rise of the picaresque. He clearly intended his
work to be read as the continuation promised by Alemán’s first part. For
instance, in order to identify and to confuse his novel with Alemán’s, he
called it Segunda parte del Guzmán de Alfarache. The name he created for
his narrator (‘Mateo’) was an obvious attempt to connect the sequel to
Alemán himself. Martí also reproduced the formal structure of the original
by dividing his continuation into three books. Moreover, he began
Guzmán’s adventures at the point where Alemán had left his rogue
‘suspended’ in Rome. Mateo Lujan refers to this ‘continuing’ adventure
with the French ambassador: ‘my life with the French ambassador was not
satisfactory because, as I said, he only cared for his own pleasure, not my
profit’. The insertion ‘as I said’ refers to a previous remark made by the
‘real’ Guzmán towards the end of the first part. Martí’s intention, with one
or two exceptions, was to continue the novel so that his audience would
detect few if any differences in theme or structure.
In Martí’s version the narrative perspective of a ‘penitent’ criminal who
judges his past life is absent. An escaped convict, his picaresque activities
simply reflect the episodic structure of his life and lead to no conclusion.
Martí preserves the right of his narrator to digress, indeed, as the novel
unfolds, the narration of the picaresque episodes diminishes as the
digressions expand. Martí was not as interested in the complex relationships
between his rogue’s picaresque adventures and digressions as he was in
using this structure to lard his narrative with plagiarized episodes and
sermons and ‘touristic’ descriptions of famous places and people. Alemán’s
reaction to what he considered to be Martí’s distortion of his own work was
predictable. Much of the authentic part of the Guzmán is taken up with
references to Martí as a ‘thief’, worse than his own rogue. Alemán takes
vengeance by having Guzmán meet Mateo Lugan’s brother and witness his
drowning. Finally, Martí’s pointless repetition of Guzmán’s adventures
establishes an open-ended and frameless imitation of experience without the
structuring control of art. It is this quality that Cervantes criticizes in the
Ginés de Pasamonte episode of Don Quixote and to which he returns in
three of his ‘exemplary’ tales: Rinconete y Cortadillo, La ilustre fregona
(The Illustrious Kitchen-Maid) and the Coloquio de los perros (The Dogs’
Colloquy).
The picaresque novel was firmly established as a literary genre with
Martí’s imitation. This period also ends the first phase of the history of the
genre in Spain. Cervantes’ reaction to a fictional autobiography which
pretended to be true was one of the first negative criticisms. His concern
with the interaction between fiction and reality is well known. And his
obsession with both the influence fiction had on life and vice-versa is a
commonplace of literary history. Don Quixote is certainly his longest, most
ironic, and yet in some ways, his most serious statement on the subject. He
was convinced that reading ‘good’ fiction was a valid way of spending
leisure time. Hence the author of fictions had a serious responsibility in
dealing with his readers’ responses to the powerful illusory nature of
literature. From the viewpoint of Cervantes’ literary aesthetic, the subject of
the picaresque novel – a criminal, hypocritical life told by the pícaro
himself – was never allowed to exist by itself without a larger context. It
had to be contained within a fictional framework and its fictional nature had
to be constantly pointed out to his readers. For Cervantes there were ‘born’
pícaros as well as picaresque masks that could be put on by anyone at will.
Rinconete and Cortadillo, for example, are born rogues who tell each other
their exploits and who embody the wandering nature of pícaros subject only
to fortune and will. They end up in Seville in a society of adult thieves
headed by the master-thief, Monipodio. What they and we discover is that
the freedom, unstructured and uncontrolled life, for which they live is an
illusion. They find that the thieves’ society is based on a constraining
hierarchy, kept in place at every level by their own rules and those of the
‘outside’ society. They leave Seville only to continue their wandering and
unstable, floating existence which points to an experience ended by death
rather than by art.
In The Illustrious Kitchen-Maid, two lads of noble blood attempt to drop
their responsibilities in society to enjoy the life of picaresque freedom.
After living roguish lives they return to their proper places and roles as
aristocrats. Here the picaresque experience is viewed as a parenthetical
moment in their lives, a space in which to ‘live out’ illusory desires by
shedding their former identities. The Dogs’ Colloquy is an ironic portrayal
of the picaresque experience. Two dogs suddenly find that they possess the
power of speech. They spend the night during which one tells the other of
his picaresque life as a dog-servant of many masters. Their dialogue ‘exists’
in the dream or vision of a soldier (hence its doubly fictional nature) who is
being treated for syphilis. Cervantes places several allusions in their
conversation to contemporary picaresque narratives – primarily to the
Guzmán – humorously undercutting the picaresque novel’s claim to portray
accurately the ‘human’ experiences of a rogue or to stand as an autonomous
art-form. The autobiographical viewpoint of the genre with its narrow –
sometimes ‘criminal’ – interpretation of experience was too dogmatic to fit
into Cervantes’ assessment of the serious nature and responsibility that
literature should bear.
Cervantes’ considerations of the serious implications of the picaresque
from the standpoint of both literature and experience seem to be unique. His
attitude was certainly not shared by the authors of picaresque novels which
were written soon after the publication of Guzmán de Alfarache. In 1605
the first novel to feature a pícara, a female rogue, was published in Medina
del Campo. It was called Libro de entretenimiento de la pícara Justina ( The
Entertaining Life of the Rogue Justine) and written by a physician from
Toledo, Francisco López de Ubeda. There is no doubt that it was conceived
in the mould of the Guzman. Justina, already having been married several
times, is about to contract another marriage with Guzmán himself. The first
edition contains an engraving which ‘visually’ establishes the connection
between Justina’s experiences and those of Guzmán and of Lazarillo. It
depicts two boats, the larger one inscribed as ‘The Ship of the Picaresque
Life’, which bears ‘Mother Celestina’, ‘Justina’ and ‘Guzmán’. It is towed
by another boat which is rowed by ‘Lazarillo’ towards the ‘Port of Death’
(‘desengaño’).
La pícara Justina is a burlesque of the recent novels of Alemán and
Martí. It is also a roman-á -clef in that López de Ubeda uses the ‘life’ of a
pícara to satirize several ‘real’ persons in residence at the Court. (The
Spanish Court was removed to Valladolid from Madrid in 1601 where it
remained until 1606.) The novel opens with Justina attempting to write
down the outline of her family history when she is interrupted by a young
jester (‘licentiate Perlícaro’) who resembles in appearance and attitude
Francisco de Quevedo. He introduces a major theme of the novel when he
accuses her of coming from a family of converted Jews (‘conversos’).
López de Ubeda includes other famous and not-so-famous persons and
authors in his veiled references. He also satirizes activities of Philip III
himself when turning Justina into a pilgrim and taking her to the city of
León. Philip III made a pilgrimage to this city in 1602, and on the basis of
López de Ubeda’s references, Marcel Bataillon has been able to date the
composition of this part of the novel between 1602 and 1603. Finding
allusions to Alemán’s second part of the Guzmán, Bataillon further
concludes that the writing of Justina’s ‘life’ ends sometime in 1604.
López de Ubeda divides his pícara’s autobiography into four books, each
treating a different phase in her career. The first is called the ‘pícara
montañesa’ (‘highlander rogue’), an obvious and clever reference on the
part of the author to Justina’s attempt to identify herself and her ancestry
with ‘old Christian’ stock, untainted with Jewish blood. The second book is
concerned with the ‘pícara romera’ (‘pilgrim rogue’) in which Justina takes
a trip to the city of León in imitation of Philip III’s then recent journey. She
satirizes and pokes fun at León’s Gothic architecture, calling attention to its
ugly and ancient churches, monuments and palaces. In the third book she
becomes the ‘pícara pleitista’ (‘pettifogger rogue’) and returns to ‘Ríoseco’
(in reality, Madrid) to bring suit against an unscrupulous mayor and her
own family for depriving her of an inheritance. They turn out to be
Moriscos and Justina victimizes them by stealing their oil and wool, tricks
that would have delighted an audience who applauded a few years later the
expulsion of such people. In the fourth book she is the ‘pícara novia’
(‘betrothed rogue’), describing the premarital adventures which lead to her
engagement to Guzman.
While La pícara Justina shares many of the picaresque conventions of its
predecessors such as the autobiographical viewpoint, the theme of ‘honour’
and a satiric view of society, it remains a private work whose full meaning
is reserved for relatively few readers. López de Ubeda speaks from behind
the skirts of his rogue to mock with brilliant turns of phrase, puns, allusions
and blunt statements the contemporary obsession with ‘purity of blood’.
Justina is not a servant to any master except to her author, who takes her
where he can find the most pertinent objects for his vicious satire. She is
more a court buffoon than a rogue. López de Ubeda’s transformation of the
pícaro in this direction marks an important change in the figure of the rogue
which is taken up by his contemporary, Quevedo, who was working on his
Buscón at the same time, and much later by the pícaro Estebanillo González
(1646), who became the court jester of Ottavio Piccolomini, Duke of
Amalfi.
Francisco de Quevedo (1580–1645) traced his genealogy back to the
‘Goths’, that is, to the most ancient, noble and pure-blooded Spaniards. He
was concerned with preserving the authentic nobility, with protecting its
blood, status and reputation, and his conservative attitude is obvious in La
vida del Buscón, Ilamado don Pablos, the autobiography of Pablos who
seeks to ascend the social ladder through deceit and trickery only to be
exposed publicly and cruelly punished for his ‘high-minded’, presumptuous
thoughts. Quevedo’s message is clear. Pablos is forced to wander as a
hardened, obstinate criminal, accompanied only by the prostitute with
whom he has chosen to live at the end of the novel. He is condemned to
relive his father’s life.
Pablos, like the other pícaros we have mentioned, is born into a family of
thieves. His father is a barber who ‘shaves’ men’s pockets; his younger
brother is beaten to death in jail. Pablos’ mother is a prostitute and witch
who is arrested by the Inquisition and sentenced to be burned at the stake.
His uncle is the town executioner of his native city, Segovia. Despite such
an environment, Pablos has ‘high’ thoughts of improving himself and
becoming a gentleman. He receives his early formal education from Cabra
(‘Goat’), a symbol of the devil, who almost starves Pablos and his boyhood
‘friend’ Don Diego to death. He later attends the University of Alcala,
where he spends half his time being spat upon and wallowing in his
defecation-filled bed, the other half in joining those who persecuted him as
a petty thief and general practical joker. He returns home to collect an
inheritance, like all ‘gentlemen’, which is surely the money his father had
managed to steal during his infamous career. He goes to Madrid and on the
way meets ‘don Toribio Rodriguez Vallejo Gomez de Ampuero y Jordán’, a
‘gentleman’ of the Court who tells Pablos about his easy life. Already in his
career Pablos has met, among others, a poet-cleric, a political schemer, a
fencing master, a card-playing hermit, and a boasting soldier. He has
exposed all of them through his satire. In Madrid he is inducted into a
society of thieves, obtains proper clothing, associates with real gentlemen,
and makes his fatal mistake in trying to marry into a respectable family. The
girl he is courting is his boyhood friend Don Diego’s cousin. Don Diego
reveals Pablos’ true identity, ‘son of a whore and thief, and arranges to have
his face slashed to mark him for life. But Quevedo ironically undercuts
even Diego’s status as a gentleman by identifying him at the beginning of
the novel as a member of the notorious Coronel family, descendants of the
converted Jew, Abraham Coronel of Segovia.
Pablos finds ‘success’ both as a false beggar and as an actor and producer
of plays. He functions well in the doubly fictional world of the stage. Yet he
gives up this career and goes to Seville where he joins a band of criminals,
and in a state of extreme inebriation, is involved in the murder of a
constable. Finding temporary refuge in the Cathedral of Seville, where he
also finds Grajales, a prostitute who ‘earns’ her living in the same edifice,
he leaves with her in search of a better life and better luck.
The relatively clear and straightforward plot of the Buscón is at times
difficult to follow because of the ‘dense’ nature of Quevedo’s language. The
effort involved in deciphering these tricks of language is further
complicated by the various types and levels of language used by Quevedo
to write the book. Pablos and the other characters speak to us in thieves’
cant, liturgical and medical vocabulary, pseudo-scientific jargon, the
language of lyric poetry, military slang, the terminology of card-playing,
gestures and songs of beggars and the language of political bureaucracy.
Quevedo’s linguistic virtuosity and the overall Court-centred nature of the
book have led many readers to see it as nothing more than a ‘libro de
entretenimiento’ [‘joke book’] in the mould of La picara Justina. As such it
contains no moral concern or relevance. Seen from the viewpoint of the
Guzmán’s explicit religious orthodoxy, this assessment is true. But within
the context of Quevedo’s other, Neostoic writings, the Buscón’s morality is
satiric and social in nature. Henry Ettinghausen has convincingly shown
that ‘Pablos is portrayed as the antithesis of the Stoic sage, an example of
and a warning to the vulgus’ (p. 127). Pablos’ background and pride
threaten the values of a society based on ‘noble’ blood, and, ideally on
Christian humility and obedience.
Another picaresque novel written at about the same time (c. 1604) but
edited only recently is Gregorio González’s El guitón Honofre. The word
guitón in the title is synonomous with pícaro. Contemporary dictionaries
define it more specifically as a false beggar of foreign origin who visits holy
places, feigning poverty in order to collect alms and food. But Honofre
explicitly rejects the life of a beggar, choosing instead to become a
gentleman. His surname in Spanish, ‘Caballero’, means gentleman. But
González, who seems to be a real gentleman, takes the attitude of Quevedo
by preventing his rogue from attaining his goal. Thus El guitón Honofre is
conceived and written more in the pattern of the Lazarillo and the Buscón
than of the Guzmá n of Alemán.
González tells us that he wrote the book to amuse himself while
recovering from an unspecified illness. His stated intention, then, was to
produce a work of entertainment for himself and his friends. The novel
seems to bear out such a ‘recreational’ motivation. The primary motif
repeated throughout the novel is vengeance, the vengeance that Honofre
takes on his various masters. He is born into poverty and is orphaned after
the death of his peasant parents (labradores’). Taken in by a widower,
Honofre is treated cruelly by the housekeeper. He responds in kind by
placing sharp stones in the spot where she is accustomed to sitting. He
becomes the servant of a sacristan and then serves a student at the
University of Salamanca. The student becomes a priest, and Honofre is left
to fend for himself. His tricks and jokes lead to more serious ‘criminal’
behaviour. After a successful postal fraud, he attempts to pose as a tax-
collector. He is discovered and thrown into prison but manages to escape
through clever exploitation of the judicial system. This leads him to say that
‘sinners’ go free while ‘good’ but poor people pay the penalty for such
corruption. In the final chapter Honofre convinces a Dominican prior that
he should be admitted as a sincere convert to the order. His feigned
penitence is motivated by his desire to escape punishment. And in the final
sentence of his ‘life’ he promises a second part which will feature a detailed
account of his ‘priestly’ adventures together with a renunciation of his
illicitly acquired religious habit.
González uses the conventions of the new genre to construct his
narrative, excepting, of course, the final conversion of the rogue, thus
leaving the Guzmán of Alemán as the only picaresque novel which presents
a ‘penitent’ narrator. This early phase of the genre includes both the
creation of the picaresque novel sensu strictu and the beginnings of its
dissolution into the picaresque in a looser sense. La pícara Justina, El
buscón, and El guitón Honofre adapt both the ‘outer’ formal elements such
as the first-person narration, autobiographical form, dishonourable birth of
the ‘hero’, and the motifs of poverty, hunger, delinquency and the pícaro as
a servant of many masters. These works also adapt a loose ‘inner’ form,
namely, the goal of the pícaro to better his material and social situation. But
it was precisely in the adaptation of these elements that they lost their
original functions, and in so doing became ‘empty’ conventions. The pícaro
in these works often becomes a satirist while simultaneously being the
satiric object of the real author: ‘the man who pretended, appeared, or even
believed himself to be part of society, to be pious or rich, a doctor or poet
[and “gentleman” we should add] while actually being an interloper from
beyond the pale’ (Paulson, Satire and the Novel, p. 5).

The picaresque novel after Cervantes

Further publications of ‘new’ picaresque narratives were eclipsed by the
popularity of Don Quixote and of the Novelas ej emplares until 1618 when
the Vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón (The Life of the Squire Marcos de
Obregón) re-established interest in the genre. Editions of the Lazarillo and
of the Guzmán continued to be printed during this hiatus. Juan de Luna’s
‘corrected’ version of the Lazarillo together with his original second part
were published in Paris ( 1620) . And a completely new Lazarillo was
written by Juan Cortes de Tolosa called El Lazarillo de Manzanares
(Madrid, 1620) , portions of which were only slightly modified borrowings
from the Guzmán and the Buscón. There was one exception in this
continuing tradition. In 1612 Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo
published La hij a de Celestina ( Celestina’s Daughter), a work which many
readers have called picaresque. The editor of the Milan 1615 edition offered
the novel as an imitation of the Lazarillo and the Guzmán. He was not
making an aesthetic judgement, rather, he merely sought to associate the
book with the two most famous pícaros in order to sell more copies. Almost
from the beginning Elena, the protagonist, travels with Montufar, the real
pícaro of the story. After several adventures, during one in which Elena
tells Montufar her life, they end up in Madrid where they are caught and
brought to justice. Elena is executed and a third-person narrator provides an
epitaph for her grave. La hij a de Celestina is not a picaresque novel even in
a ‘loose’ sense. The conventions of the autobiographical form, the basic
theme of honour and the complex relationships between the pícaro and
society are absent.
The second phase of the picaresque in Spain begins with Vicente
Espinel’s Marcos de Obregón and includes Jerónimo de Alcala Yáñez’s
Alonso, mozo de muchos amos ( Alonso, Servant of Many Masters), First
Part, Madrid, 1624, Second Part, Valladolid, 1626, and the anonymous La
vida y hechos de Estebanillo González, hombre de buen humor ( The Life
and Deeds of Estebanillo Gonzalez, a Comedian) , Antwerp, 1646, but
published in Spain in 1652 and 1655. Many literary histories describe these
works as belonging to the ‘agony’ or ‘tragi-comic’ phase of the genre in
Spain, picaresque only in a loose sense or even ‘anti-picaresque’.
Vicente Espinel’s only novel, for instance, shares some elements with its
ancestors, notably the first-person narrative, the didactic intent and the
episodic structure. However, its differences are perhaps more striking. The
most fundamental change is that the ‘life’ of Marcos is based to a great
extent on the biography of Espinel himself. Marcos tells us that he comes
from an Old Christian family in Ronda and, although poor, insists on
leading an honest life. In this sense Marcos de Obregón is an ‘anti-
picaresque’ novel. Even his ‘picaresque’ tricks are used against other
pícaros. The urban-centred nature of other novels is replaced with extensive
travels. Most of Marcos’ career is more reminiscent of a ‘Greek’ romance
than of a picaresque novel. His references to fortune, shipwrecks,
imprisonments, ‘coincidental’ reunions with former friends, disguised
young women and strange islands are the stuff of romance. He ends up a
squire, not as the result of struggling upward, but by waiting patiently to
find his niche in society. Finally, Espinel’s narrator has a different attitude
towards honour than previous rogues. Like Cervantes before him, Espinel
argues that the external honour so sought after by Lazarillo, Guzmán and
Pablos – and denied them because of their tainted blood – is illusory and
immoral. Being a gentleman should not be based on appearance or race but
on a virtuous life.
The author of Alonso, mozo de muchos amos, doctor Jerónimo de Alcala
Yanez y Rivera studied classics and theology at Alcala and medicine at
Valladolid. His religious bent had a particular influence in Alonso where, in
addition to the overall moral tone of the novel, specific reference is made to
the miracle of the Virgin of Fuencisla, a topic to which he devoted a brief
pamphlet. The author’s medical training and vocation also appear in the
novel. One entire chapter exalts the practice of medicine. This sympathetic
attitude is a radical departure from other picaresque novels which tend to
satirize the medical profession in general and doctors in particular. Yáñez’s
most important innovation, however, is the use of narrative dialogue as the
structuring device of the novel. Alonso is aided in the telling of his own
story by a few significant interruptions from his listeners. The total effect of
this ‘conversational’ technique bestows a sense of presence, of ‘here and
now’ to Alonso’s past life. Bringing into the book itself the character to
whom it is addressed had never been tried before, except, of course, for
Cervantes’ burlesque version in The Dogs’ Colloquy.
Alonso relates his life in the first part of the novel to the vicar of the
monastery where he is a lay-brother. He begins with his birth and gives an
account of the various masters he has served prior to his arrival at the
monastery: his uncle, a priest; a group of students, a nobleman in Toledo, a
judge in Córdoba, a doctor in Seville, a young widow in Valencia, a
constable in Mexico, and a group of actors. Like Marcos before him,
Alonso, exhausted by the ‘vanities of the world’ and seeking refuge from
the insecurities of life, retires to the cloister where he hopes to serve and to
please only God. He had been there fourteen years before he begins his
narration. Alonso has abandoned the monastery in the second part of the
book and has become a hermit. He describes his adventures between these
events to a parish priest, including details of his experiences with a band of
gypsies, his marriage, his service to a Portuguese gentleman, and his many
professions. The final episode of his narrated life deals with his
imprisonment in Algiers. Ransomed by Trinitarian monks, he returns to
Spain where he decides to remain until his death. Alonso’s obsessive
moralizing defines him more as a preacher than as a pícaro, and even from
the viewpoint of earlier rogues, he fails to fit the category. His retirement
from the world is in one sense an acknowledgement of his ‘material’
failure, a failure, however, which is overshadowed by ‘spiritual’ success.
Finding inner peace away from society is the lesson learned by Alonso.
The publication in 1646 of La vida y hechos de Estebanillo González
brings the genre of the Spanish picaresque full circle. Like the Lazarillo de
Tormes written nearly a century before, the ‘life’ of Estebanillo was
published with the rogue’s name on the title page as the ‘real’ author. He
writes his autobiography explicitly in the picaresque tradition but with one
fundamental difference, as he explains in the introduction to the reader: ‘I
want to inform you that it is not like the fictitious one of Guzman de
Alfarache, or the legendary one of Lazarillo de Tormes, or even the
hypothetical one of the Gentleman of the Pincers [a reference to Quevedo’s
short satire of the same title, or to the Buscón itself], but a true account,
with proof and witnesses who are named so that everyone can validate my
experiences – where, how and when they took place— .’ Estebanillo’s life
may indeed be the first authentic autobiography of a ‘real’ pícaro.
He dedicates his book to Ottavio Piccolomini, Duke of Amalfi (1599–
1656) in whose service Estebanillo spent much of his life. Even though
Estebanillo is not employed as Piccolomini’s buffoon until chapter seven,
the initial episodes recount his early picaresque life: his upbringing in Italy
and the adventures which led him to Flanders where he met his famous
master. Estebanillo was born in Galicia, Spain, but baptized, he points out,
in Rome. And like those rogues of the early picaresque, there is some
question about the ‘purity’ of his ancestors. He reports that his mother,
before she died, insisted almost too strongly on their noble blood and on his
direct link with the Count Fernan González. Estebanillo’s early career
follows the pattern of Guzmán’s and Pablos’. He too attends school, turns
into a practical joker and petty thief and is dismissed and apprenticed to a
barber friend of his father. He travels across Europe and witnesses most of
the major battles of the Thirty Years War. His journey includes activities
reminiscent of earlier pícaros. At one point he is called another Lazarillo de
Tormes because of the tricks he plays. Elsewhere he exchanges his worn
cape for a new one belonging to a Spaniard, echoing a trick Pablos learned
from Lorenzo del Pedroso, a fellow thief in Madrid (III, 3).
When Estebanillo accepts a position as professional buffoon to the Duke
of Amalfi, he is forced to act the role of a pícaro, making others laugh but
causing himself great discomfort. He remarks how difficult being an
‘hombre de buen humor’ is when faced daily with horrors such as
dismembered bodies, blood, and the general ravages of battles. He admits
that he is a coward who would prefer to avoid facing the reality of the world
from which there is no escape. War had replaced the conventional ‘society’
with which previous pícaros were forced to contend. Despite the macabre
background of Estebanillo’s life, his antics, jokes and stories are intended to
build a humorous foreground, to entertain his readers and to remind
Piccolomini – in a rather grotesque manner – of the necessity for
buffoonery in the midst of death. Estebanillo González’s foundation lies in
the early Spanish picaresque, but its meaning points to the ‘present’
moment which was defined by the agonizing and enduring political and
religious conflicts in seventeenth-century Europe. We will encounter the
same theme in Grimmelshausen’s Simplicius Simplicissimus, another book
whose hero and narrator carries on a frustrating search for a tranquil place
within the chaos of war.
Estebanillo González takes both the pícaro and the picaresque novel in a
new direction. No longer is the rogue a penitent criminal (Guzmán) or an
obstinate law-breaker (Pablos). Nor does he seek to better himself by
associating with ‘respectable’ people (Lazarillo). Estebanillo’s honour, he
says at one point, is the pleasure (‘gusto’) he takes. And he certainly makes
no serious claims to a Christian family background (Marcos, Alonso). As a
clown he jokes at himself as a rogue and parasite. His solitude, which he
shares with his predecessors, defines his status as a comedian. His reference
in the final paragraphs to the death of Philip IV’s wife (October 6, 1644)
does not elicit ‘inner’ peace, rather it calls forth his depressions and sense
of confusion. The clown prepares for his own death, not by doing penitence
but by publishing his ‘life’ in order to entertain and amuse his readers. He
remains a clown to the end. The perfectly sustained autobiographical
illusion of the Lazarillo de Tormes is no longer a literary tour de force
because it is no longer an illusion. The perfect blending of history and
fiction is brought about not by a Renaissance humanist, social reformer or
court satirist, but by a clown-author whose words are forced to bear the
tragi-comic nature of his life.