El Periquillo Sarniento
Encyclopedia
The Mangy Parrot: The Life and Times of Periquillo Sarniento Written by himself for his Children by Mexican
author José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi
, is generally considered the first novel written and published in Latin America
. El Periquillo was written in 1816, though due to government censorship the last of four volumes were not published until 1831
. The novel has been continuously in print in more than twenty editions since then.
El Periquillo Sarniento can be read as a nation-building novel, written at a critical moment in the transition of Mexico (and Latin America) from colony to independence. Jean Franco
has characterized the novel as "a ferocious indictment of Spanish administration in Mexico: ignorance, superstition and corruption are seen to be its most notable characteristics" [Jean Franco, An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 34; cited in Benedict Anderson
, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London: Verso, 1991), p. 29].
Given Lizardi's career as a pioneering Mexican journalist, his novel can also be read as a journal of opinion in the guise of a picaresque novel
. It follows the adventures of Pedro Sarmiento (nicknamed "Periquillo Sarniento" or "Mangy Parrot" by his disreputable friends), who, like Lizardi himself, is the son of a Criollo family from Mexico City
with more pretensions to "good birth" than means of support. The story begins with Periquillo’s birth and miseducation and continues through his endless attempts to make an unearned living, as a student, a friar
, a gambler, a notary, a barber, a pharmacist, a doctor, a beggar, a soldier, a count, and a thief, until late in life he sees the light and begins to lead an honest life.
At every point along the way, Lizardi uses the deathbed voice of the elderly and repentant Periquillo to lambast the social conditions that led to his wasted life. In this, the novelist mimics the role of the early nineteenth-century journalist more interested in arguing opinions than relating mundane incidents. The marriage of slapstick humor with moralizing social commentary, established in El Periquillo, remained a constant in the Mexican novels that followed on its heels throughout the nineteenth century (Antonio Benitez-Rojo
, "José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi and the Emergence of the Spanish American Novel as National Project," Modern Language Quarterly 57 (2): pp. 334–35). Agustín Yáñez
justifies this often criticized "moralizing" tendency in Lizardi as "a constant in the artistic production of Mexico… and moreover, it is a constant in Mexican life" ("El Pensador Mexicano," in Cedomil Goic, ed., Historia y crítica de la literatura hispanoamericana, t. I, Época colonial, Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1988, pp. 428–29).
At the same time, as critics have noted, Lizardi's interest in depicting the realities and reproducing the speech of Mexicans from all social classes make his novel a bridge between the inherited picaresque mold that forms its overt structure and the costumbrista
novels of the nineteenth century.
s, two plays, dozens of poems, over 250 articles and pamphlets — are important in three ways: as artistic expressions in themselves; as texts that contributed in vital ways to the intellectual life of Mexico early in its independence; and as windows into the daily life of that period.
Of Lizardi's many published works, El Periquillo Sarniento remains the most important. It typifies the dual impulse of his writing: to entertain and to edify. It is also a lively, comic novel that captures much of the reality of Mexico in 1816. In his subsequent novels Noches tristes (1818) and La Quijotita y su prima (1818–19), Lizardi's didactic side won out over his will to entertain. La Quijotita in particular is an exercise in moralizing, populated with flat characters whose function is to model particular foibles or virtue
s. Lizardi's last novel, Don Catrín de la Fachenda (1820), has on the contrary been held up by some critics as superior to El Periquillo. In Don Catrín, Lizardi took pains to respond to critics of the overt moralizing in his first novel. The result is a slimmed-down, artistically unified, more ironic, and darker picaresque (Nancy Vogeley, "A Latin American Enlightenment Version of the Picaresque: Lizardi's Don Catrín de la Fachenda," in Carmen Benito-Vessels and Michael Zappala, eds., The Picaresque, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994, pp. 123–46). Yet El Periquillo retains its importance. As Antonio Benítez-Rojo writes, citing Benedict Anderson's use of El Periquillo as an exemplar of the anti-colonial novel, "the illusion of accompanying Periquillo along the roads and through the villages and towns of the viceroyalty helped awaken in the novel's readers the desire for nationness." Don Catrín "is artistically superior to El Periquillo Sarniento," Benítez-Rojo continues, "yet for all its defects the latter, because of its great vitality, is a major work of Mexican literature." ("José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi and the Emergence of the Spanish American Novel as National Project," p. 335; p. 336.)
Finally, El Periquillo has the virtue of being the first, as Lizardi himself noted: "I am far from believing that I have written a masterpiece that is free from defects: it has many that I recognize, and must have others still that I have not noticed; but it also has one undeniable distinction, which is that of being the first novel that has been written in this country by an American in three hundred years." (Cited in Jefferson Rea Spell, Bridging the Gap, Mexico City: Editorial Libros de México, 1971, p. 267.) Because of its status as the first novel written by a Latin American and one emulated by generations of Mexican novelists, El Periquillo Sarniento appears on many "must-read" lists for graduate programs in Latin American literature
, and it is of equal interest to students of Latin American history.
(This article was contributed and corrected by the translator of the Hackett edition, and contains much of the same information that will be found in the preface to that translation.)
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
author José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi
José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi
José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi , Mexican writer and political journalist, best known as the author of El Periquillo Sarniento , reputed to be the first novel written in Latin America....
, is generally considered the first novel written and published in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
. El Periquillo was written in 1816, though due to government censorship the last of four volumes were not published until 1831
1831 in literature
The year 1831 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* January 15 - Victor Hugo completed his novel Notre-Dame de Paris, known in English as The Hunchback of Notre Dame....
. The novel has been continuously in print in more than twenty editions since then.
El Periquillo Sarniento can be read as a nation-building novel, written at a critical moment in the transition of Mexico (and Latin America) from colony to independence. Jean Franco
Jean Franco
Jean Franco is a British-born academic and literary critic known for her pioneering work on Latin American literature. Educated at Manchester and London, she has taught at London, Essex , and Stanford, and is currently professor emerita at Columbia University.-Research:Jean Franco's research is...
has characterized the novel as "a ferocious indictment of Spanish administration in Mexico: ignorance, superstition and corruption are seen to be its most notable characteristics" [Jean Franco, An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 34; cited in Benedict Anderson
Benedict Anderson
Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson is Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor Emeritus of International Studies, Government & Asian Studies at Cornell University, and is best known for his celebrated book Imagined Communities, first published in 1983...
, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London: Verso, 1991), p. 29].
Given Lizardi's career as a pioneering Mexican journalist, his novel can also be read as a journal of opinion in the guise of a picaresque novel
Picaresque novel
The picaresque novel is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society...
. It follows the adventures of Pedro Sarmiento (nicknamed "Periquillo Sarniento" or "Mangy Parrot" by his disreputable friends), who, like Lizardi himself, is the son of a Criollo family from Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
with more pretensions to "good birth" than means of support. The story begins with Periquillo’s birth and miseducation and continues through his endless attempts to make an unearned living, as a student, a friar
Friar
A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders.-Friars and monks:...
, a gambler, a notary, a barber, a pharmacist, a doctor, a beggar, a soldier, a count, and a thief, until late in life he sees the light and begins to lead an honest life.
At every point along the way, Lizardi uses the deathbed voice of the elderly and repentant Periquillo to lambast the social conditions that led to his wasted life. In this, the novelist mimics the role of the early nineteenth-century journalist more interested in arguing opinions than relating mundane incidents. The marriage of slapstick humor with moralizing social commentary, established in El Periquillo, remained a constant in the Mexican novels that followed on its heels throughout the nineteenth century (Antonio Benitez-Rojo
Antonio Benitez-Rojo
Antonio Benítez-Rojo was a Cuban novelist, essayist and short-story writer. He was widely regarded as the most significant Cuban author of his generation. His work has been translated into nine languages and collected in more than 50 anthologies.Born in Havana, he lived in Cuba with his mother...
, "José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi and the Emergence of the Spanish American Novel as National Project," Modern Language Quarterly 57 (2): pp. 334–35). Agustín Yáñez
Agustín Yáñez
Agustín Yáñez Delgadillo was a notable Mexican writer and politician who served as Governor of Jalisco and Secretary of Public Education during Gustavo Díaz Ordaz's presidency...
justifies this often criticized "moralizing" tendency in Lizardi as "a constant in the artistic production of Mexico… and moreover, it is a constant in Mexican life" ("El Pensador Mexicano," in Cedomil Goic, ed., Historia y crítica de la literatura hispanoamericana, t. I, Época colonial, Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1988, pp. 428–29).
At the same time, as critics have noted, Lizardi's interest in depicting the realities and reproducing the speech of Mexicans from all social classes make his novel a bridge between the inherited picaresque mold that forms its overt structure and the costumbrista
Costumbrista
Costumbrismo refers to the literary or pictorial interpretation of local everyday life, mannerisms, and customs, primarily in the Hispanic scene, and particularly in the 19th century...
novels of the nineteenth century.
Place in Lizardi's Work
José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi is emblematic of the generation of intellectuals, artists, and writers who led Mexico into the modern era. His own life history resonates with the ambivalences and outright contradictions of a world between colonial rule and independence. His writings — four novels, several fableFable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
s, two plays, dozens of poems, over 250 articles and pamphlets — are important in three ways: as artistic expressions in themselves; as texts that contributed in vital ways to the intellectual life of Mexico early in its independence; and as windows into the daily life of that period.
Of Lizardi's many published works, El Periquillo Sarniento remains the most important. It typifies the dual impulse of his writing: to entertain and to edify. It is also a lively, comic novel that captures much of the reality of Mexico in 1816. In his subsequent novels Noches tristes (1818) and La Quijotita y su prima (1818–19), Lizardi's didactic side won out over his will to entertain. La Quijotita in particular is an exercise in moralizing, populated with flat characters whose function is to model particular foibles or virtue
Virtue
Virtue is moral excellence. A virtue is a positive trait or quality subjectively deemed to be morally excellent and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being....
s. Lizardi's last novel, Don Catrín de la Fachenda (1820), has on the contrary been held up by some critics as superior to El Periquillo. In Don Catrín, Lizardi took pains to respond to critics of the overt moralizing in his first novel. The result is a slimmed-down, artistically unified, more ironic, and darker picaresque (Nancy Vogeley, "A Latin American Enlightenment Version of the Picaresque: Lizardi's Don Catrín de la Fachenda," in Carmen Benito-Vessels and Michael Zappala, eds., The Picaresque, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994, pp. 123–46). Yet El Periquillo retains its importance. As Antonio Benítez-Rojo writes, citing Benedict Anderson's use of El Periquillo as an exemplar of the anti-colonial novel, "the illusion of accompanying Periquillo along the roads and through the villages and towns of the viceroyalty helped awaken in the novel's readers the desire for nationness." Don Catrín "is artistically superior to El Periquillo Sarniento," Benítez-Rojo continues, "yet for all its defects the latter, because of its great vitality, is a major work of Mexican literature." ("José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi and the Emergence of the Spanish American Novel as National Project," p. 335; p. 336.)
Finally, El Periquillo has the virtue of being the first, as Lizardi himself noted: "I am far from believing that I have written a masterpiece that is free from defects: it has many that I recognize, and must have others still that I have not noticed; but it also has one undeniable distinction, which is that of being the first novel that has been written in this country by an American in three hundred years." (Cited in Jefferson Rea Spell, Bridging the Gap, Mexico City: Editorial Libros de México, 1971, p. 267.) Because of its status as the first novel written by a Latin American and one emulated by generations of Mexican novelists, El Periquillo Sarniento appears on many "must-read" lists for graduate programs in Latin American literature
Latin American literature
Latin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and indigenous languages of the Americas. It rose to particular prominence globally during the second half of the 20th century, largely due to the...
, and it is of equal interest to students of Latin American history.
Print Editions of El Periquillo in Spanish and English
- The most widely available edition in Spanish of El Periquillo Sarniento, edited and annotated by Jefferson Rea Spell, is published in Mexico by Editorial Porrúa (many editions since 1949).
- An excellent new edition, edited and annotated by Carmen Ruiz Barrionuevo, was published in Madrid by Ediciones Cátedra in 1997, but has since gone out of print.
- A partial translation of El Periquillo Sarniento into English was published in 1942 by Doubleday under the title The Itching Parrot.
- A new and unabridged English translation, The Mangy Parrot (2004), is published by Hackett Publishing CompanyHackett Publishing CompanyHackett Publishing Company, Inc. is an academic publishing house based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Since beginning operations in 1972, Hackett has concentrated mainly on humanities, especially classical and philosophical texts. Many Hackett titles are used as textbooks, making the company very...
. ISBN 0-87720-735-8
- An abridgment of the Hackett translation is published under the title The Mangy Parrot, Abridged (2005). ISBN 0-87220-670-X
Online editions
- The Bilbioteca Virtual has a digital version available in Spanish (Vol. i-iv) at http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/FichaAutor.html?Ref=124
(This article was contributed and corrected by the translator of the Hackett edition, and contains much of the same information that will be found in the preface to that translation.)