Picaresque novel
Encyclopedia
The picaresque novel is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction
which is usually satirical
and depicts, in realistic
and often humorous detail, the adventure
s of a roguish hero
of low social class
who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. This style of novel
originated in sixteenth century Spain
and flourished throughout Europe
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It continues to influence modern literature.
(1554), the novella credited with founding the genre. The expression picaresque novel was coined in 1810.
. With Petronius
's Satyricon
, Lazarillo takes some of the traits of the central figure of Encolpius, a former gladiator, but it's unlikely that the author had access to Petronius's work; from the comedies of Plautus
, it borrows from the figure of the parasite and the supple slave; other traits are taken from Apuleius
's The Golden Ass
. The Golden Ass and Satyricon were particularly revived and widely read in renaissance Europe, and are rare surviving samples of a mostly lost genre, which was highly popular in the classical world, known as "Milesian tale
s."
Arabic literature
, which was read widely in Spain in the time of Al-Andalus
and also possessed a literary tradition with similar themes, is another possible formative influence on the picaresque style. Al-Hamadhani (d.1008) of Hamadhan (Iran) is credited with inventing the literary genre of maqamat
in which a wandering vagabond makes his living on the gifts his listeners give him following his extemporaneous displays of rhetoric, erudition, or verse, often done with a trickster
's touch. Ibn al-Astarkuwi or al-Ashtarkuni (d.1134) also wrote in the genre maqamat
, comparable to later European picaresque novels.
While elements of Chaucer and Boccaccio
have a picaresque feel and are likely to have contributed to the style, the modern picaresque begins with Lazarillo de Tormes
, which was published anonymously in Antwerp and Spain
in 1554. It is variously considered either the first picaresque novel or at least the antecedent of the genre. The title character, Lazarillo, is a pícaro who must live by his wits in an impoverished country full of hypocrisy.
, written in Florence
beginning in 1558, also has much in common with the picaresque. Another early example is Mateo Alemán
's Guzmán de Alfarache (1599), characterized by religiosity.
Francisco de Quevedo
's El buscón
(1604 according to Francisco Rico; the exact date is uncertain, yet it was certainly a very early work) is considered the masterpiece of the subgenre by A.A. Parker, because of his baroque
style and the study of the delinquent psychology. However, a more recent school of thought, led by Francisco Rico, rejects Parker's view, contending instead that the protagonist, Pablos, is a highly unrealistic character, simply a means for Quevedo to launch classist
, racist
and sexist
attacks. Moreover, argues Rico, the structure of the novel is radically different from previous works of the picaresque genre: Quevedo uses the conventions of the picaresque as a mere vehicle to show off his abilities with conceit and rhetoric, rather than to construct a satirical critique of Spanish Golden Age
society.
Indeed, in order to understand the historical context that led to the development of these paradigmatic picaresque novels in Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is essential to take into consideration the circumstances surrounding the lives of conversos, whose ancestors had been Jewish, and whose New Christian faith was subjected to close scrutiny and mistrust.
In other European countries, these Spanish novels were read and imitated. In Germany
, Grimmelshausen
wrote Simplicius Simplicissimus (1669), the most important of non-Spanish picaresque novels. It describes the devastation caused by the Thirty Years' War
. In Le Sage's Gil Blas
(1715) is a classic example of the genre, which in France
had declined into an aristocratic adventure. In England
, the body of Tobias Smollett
's work, and Daniel Defoe
's Moll Flanders
(1722) are considered picaresque, but they lack the sense of religious redemption of delinquency that was very important in Spanish and German novels. The triumph of Moll Flanders is more economic than moral.
The classic Chinese
novel Journey to the West
is considered to have considerable picaresque elements. Having been written in 1590, it is contemporary with much of the above - but is unlikely to have been directly influenced by the European genre.
-speaking world, the term "picaresque" has referred more to a literary technique
or model than to the precise genre that the Spanish call picaresco.
The English-language term can simply refer to an episodic recounting of the adventures of an anti-hero
on the road. Henry Fielding
proved his mastery of the form in Joseph Andrews
(1742), The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great (1743) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
(1749), but, as Fielding himself wrote, these novels were written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes
, author of Don Quixote, not in imitation of the picaresque novel; Cervantes himself wrote a short picaresque novel, Rinconete y Cortadillo part of his Novelas Ejemplares (Exemplary Novels).
Voltaire's French novel Candide
(1759) contains elements of the picaresque. An interesting variation on the tradition of the picaresque is The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan (1824), a satirical view on early nineteenth century Persia, written by a British diplomat, James Morier.
Charles Dickens
, who was influenced by Fielding, wrote his first six novels in the picaresque form, with Martin Chuzzlewit
(1844) being the transitional novel to his later more serious and mature works. Other novels with elements of the picaresque include the Canadian Solomon Gursky Was Here
and the English The Luck of Barry Lyndon
(1844).
Some modern novelists have used some picaresque techniques, as Gogol in Dead Souls
(1842–52). Mark Twain
's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(1884) was consciously written as a picaresque novel
's Kim
(1901) combined the influence of the picaresque novel with the modern spy novel. The illustrated The Magic Pudding
(1918), by Australian author Norman Lindsay
, is an example of the picaresque adapted for children's literature.
The Enormous Room
is E. E. Cummings
' 1922 autobiographical novel about his imprisonment in France
during World War I
on unfounded charges of "espionage", and it includes many picaresque depictions of his adventures as "an American in a French prison". Jaroslav Hašek
's The Good Soldier Švejk
(1923) was the first example of the picaresque technique in Central Europe
. J.B. Priestley made excellent use of the form in his enormously successful The Good Companions
(1929) and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize
for Fiction. Many other novels of vagabond life were consciously written as picaresque novels, such as Henry Miller
's Tropic of Cancer
(1934)..
Camilo José Cela
's La familia de Pascual Duarte (1942). Saul Bellow
's The Adventures of Augie March
(1953) is a picaresque novel with bildungsroman
traits. George MacDonald Fraser
's novels about Harry Flashman (1969) combine the picaresque with historical fiction. Günter Grass
's The Tin Drum
(1959).
Sergio Leone
identified his spaghetti westerns, more specifically his Dollars trilogy
(1964), as being in the picaresque style.
Hunter S. Thompson
's "gonzo journalism
" (1970) can be seen as a hybrid of fictional picaresque with memoir and traditional reporting. The picaresque elements are especially prominent in Thompson's less journalistic, more literary and psychotropically themed works, such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
(1971) and The Great Shark Hunt
(1979).
Recent examples are Jerzy Kosinski
's The Painted Bird (1965), Rita Mae Brown
's Rubyfruit Jungle
(1973), John Kennedy Toole's
A Confederacy of Dunces
(1980), Isabel Allende
's Eva Luna
(1987), Edward Abbey
's The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel (1988), Robert Clark Young
's One of the Guys
(1999), Helen Zahavi
's Dirty Weekend
(1991), C. D. Payne's Youth in Revolt
(1993), Christian Kracht
's Faserland
(1995), Neal Stephenson
's Quicksilver
(2003) and Aravind Adiga
's "The White Tiger
" (Booker Prize 2008).
Some science fiction
and fantasy
books also show a clear picaresque influence, transported to a variety of invented worlds—for example, The Dying Earth
series of Jack Vance
, Fritz Leiber
's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
, James H. Schmitz
's The Witches of Karres
and L. Sprague de Camp
's Novarian series
. The genre-bending fiction of Gene Wolfe
combines strong elements of the picaresque with a catalog of other forms of fiction—bildungsroman, memoir, mythic poem, classical drama, modernist fiction, and others. This is the case particularly in his Book of the New Sun, the tale of Severian the Torturer's rise to the monarchy in a remote future world that is probably Earth.
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
which is usually satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
and depicts, in realistic
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
and often humorous detail, the adventure
Adventure
An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. The term is often used to refer to activities with some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing and or participating in extreme sports...
s of a roguish hero
Hero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
of low social class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. This style of novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
originated in sixteenth century Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
and flourished throughout Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It continues to influence modern literature.
Etymology
The word picaro starts to first appear in Spain with the current meaning in 1545. The word picaro does not appear in Lazarillo de TormesLazarillo de Tormes
The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities is a Spanish novella, published anonymously because of its heretical content...
(1554), the novella credited with founding the genre. The expression picaresque novel was coined in 1810.
Sources, influences and precursors of Lazarillo
The character type of Lazarillo, which determines the story and the so-called picaresque novel genre, has been shaped from characterization elements already present in RomanRoman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
. With Petronius
Petronius
Gaius Petronius Arbiter was a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian age.-Life:...
's Satyricon
Satyricon
Satyricon is a Latin work of fiction in a mixture of prose and poetry. It is believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as a certain Titus Petronius...
, Lazarillo takes some of the traits of the central figure of Encolpius, a former gladiator, but it's unlikely that the author had access to Petronius's work; from the comedies of Plautus
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
, it borrows from the figure of the parasite and the supple slave; other traits are taken from Apuleius
Apuleius
Apuleius was a Latin prose writer. He was a Berber, from Madaurus . He studied Platonist philosophy in Athens; travelled to Italy, Asia Minor and Egypt; and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the...
's The Golden Ass
The Golden Ass
The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass , is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety....
. The Golden Ass and Satyricon were particularly revived and widely read in renaissance Europe, and are rare surviving samples of a mostly lost genre, which was highly popular in the classical world, known as "Milesian tale
Milesian tale
The Milesian tale originates in ancient Greek and Roman literature. According to most authorities, it is a short story, fable, or folktale featuring love and adventure, usually being erotic and titillating. M. C...
s."
Arabic literature
Arabic literature
Arabic literature is the writing produced, both prose and poetry, by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is adab which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, and implies politeness, culture and enrichment....
, which was read widely in Spain in the time of Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to a nation and territorial region also commonly referred to as Moorish Iberia. The name describes parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492, although the territorial boundaries...
and also possessed a literary tradition with similar themes, is another possible formative influence on the picaresque style. Al-Hamadhani (d.1008) of Hamadhan (Iran) is credited with inventing the literary genre of maqamat
Maqama
Maqāma are an Arabic literary genre of rhymed prose with intervals of poetry in which rhetorical extravagance is conspicuous. The 10th century author Badī' al-Zaman al-Hamadhāni is said to have invented the form, which was extended by al-Hariri of Basra in the next century...
in which a wandering vagabond makes his living on the gifts his listeners give him following his extemporaneous displays of rhetoric, erudition, or verse, often done with a trickster
Trickster
In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. It is suggested by Hansen that the term "Trickster" was probably first used in this...
's touch. Ibn al-Astarkuwi or al-Ashtarkuni (d.1134) also wrote in the genre maqamat
Maqama
Maqāma are an Arabic literary genre of rhymed prose with intervals of poetry in which rhetorical extravagance is conspicuous. The 10th century author Badī' al-Zaman al-Hamadhāni is said to have invented the form, which was extended by al-Hariri of Basra in the next century...
, comparable to later European picaresque novels.
While elements of Chaucer and Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
have a picaresque feel and are likely to have contributed to the style, the modern picaresque begins with Lazarillo de Tormes
Lazarillo de Tormes
The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities is a Spanish novella, published anonymously because of its heretical content...
, which was published anonymously in Antwerp and Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
in 1554. It is variously considered either the first picaresque novel or at least the antecedent of the genre. The title character, Lazarillo, is a pícaro who must live by his wits in an impoverished country full of hypocrisy.
Sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
The autobiography of Benvenuto CelliniBenvenuto Cellini
Benvenuto Cellini was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, painter, soldier and musician, who also wrote a famous autobiography. He was one of the most important artists of Mannerism.-Youth:...
, written in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
beginning in 1558, also has much in common with the picaresque. Another early example is Mateo Alemán
Mateo Alemán
Mateo Alemán y de Enero was a Spanish novelist and writer.He graduated at Seville University in 1564, studied later at Salamanca and Alcalá, and from 1571 to 1588 held a post in the treasury; in 1594 he was arrested on suspicion of malversation, but was speedily released...
's Guzmán de Alfarache (1599), characterized by religiosity.
Francisco de Quevedo
Francisco de Quevedo
Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, Luis de Góngora, Quevedo was one of the most prominent Spanish poets of the age. His style is characterized by what was called conceptismo...
's El buscón
El Buscón
El Buscón is a picaresque novel by Francisco de Quevedo...
(1604 according to Francisco Rico; the exact date is uncertain, yet it was certainly a very early work) is considered the masterpiece of the subgenre by A.A. Parker, because of his baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
style and the study of the delinquent psychology. However, a more recent school of thought, led by Francisco Rico, rejects Parker's view, contending instead that the protagonist, Pablos, is a highly unrealistic character, simply a means for Quevedo to launch classist
Classism
Classism is prejudice or discrimination on the basis of social class. It includes individual attitudes and behaviors, systems of policies and practices that are set up to benefit the upper classes at the expense of the lower classes...
, racist
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and sexist
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
attacks. Moreover, argues Rico, the structure of the novel is radically different from previous works of the picaresque genre: Quevedo uses the conventions of the picaresque as a mere vehicle to show off his abilities with conceit and rhetoric, rather than to construct a satirical critique of Spanish Golden Age
Spanish Golden Age
The Spanish Golden Age is a period of flourishing in arts and literature in Spain, coinciding with the political rise and decline of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty. El Siglo de Oro does not imply precise dates and is usually considered to have lasted longer than an actual century...
society.
Indeed, in order to understand the historical context that led to the development of these paradigmatic picaresque novels in Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is essential to take into consideration the circumstances surrounding the lives of conversos, whose ancestors had been Jewish, and whose New Christian faith was subjected to close scrutiny and mistrust.
In other European countries, these Spanish novels were read and imitated. In Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Grimmelshausen
Grimmelshausen
Grimmelshausen is a municipality in the district of Hildburghausen, in Thuringia, Germany....
wrote Simplicius Simplicissimus (1669), the most important of non-Spanish picaresque novels. It describes the devastation caused by the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
. In Le Sage's Gil Blas
Gil Blas
Gil Blas is a picaresque novel by Alain-René Lesage published between 1715 and 1735. It is considered to be the last masterpiece of the picaresque genre.-Plot summary:...
(1715) is a classic example of the genre, which in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
had declined into an aristocratic adventure. In England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, the body of Tobias Smollett
Tobias Smollett
Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle , which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens.-Life:Smollett was born at Dalquhurn, now part of Renton,...
's work, and Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...
's Moll Flanders
Moll Flanders
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders is a novel written by Daniel Defoe in 1722, after his work as a journalist and pamphleteer. By 1722, Defoe had become a recognised novelist, with the success of Robinson Crusoe in 1719...
(1722) are considered picaresque, but they lack the sense of religious redemption of delinquency that was very important in Spanish and German novels. The triumph of Moll Flanders is more economic than moral.
The classic Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
novel Journey to the West
Journey to the West
Journey to the West is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. It was written by Wu Cheng'en in the 16th century. In English-speaking countries, the tale is also often known simply as Monkey. This was one title used for a popular, abridged translation by Arthur Waley...
is considered to have considerable picaresque elements. Having been written in 1590, it is contemporary with much of the above - but is unlikely to have been directly influenced by the European genre.
Influence on modern fiction: 18th and 19th centuries
In the EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
-speaking world, the term "picaresque" has referred more to a literary technique
Literary technique
A literary technique is any element or the entirety of elements a writer intentionally uses in the structure of their work...
or model than to the precise genre that the Spanish call picaresco.
The English-language term can simply refer to an episodic recounting of the adventures of an anti-hero
Anti-hero
In fiction, an antihero is generally considered to be a protagonist whose character is at least in some regards conspicuously contrary to that of the archetypal hero, and is in some instances its antithesis in which the character is generally useless at being a hero or heroine when they're...
on the road. Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones....
proved his mastery of the form in Joseph Andrews
Joseph Andrews
Joseph Andrews, or The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams, was the first published full-length novel of the English author and magistrate Henry Fielding, and indeed among the first novels in the English language...
(1742), The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great (1743) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. First published on 28 February 1749, Tom Jones is among the earliest English prose works describable as a novel...
(1749), but, as Fielding himself wrote, these novels were written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes
Cervantes
-People:*Alfonso J. Cervantes , mayor of St. Louis, Missouri*Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, 16th-century man of letters*Ignacio Cervantes, Cuban composer*Jorge Cervantes, a world-renowned expert on indoor, outdoor, and greenhouse cannabis cultivation...
, author of Don Quixote, not in imitation of the picaresque novel; Cervantes himself wrote a short picaresque novel, Rinconete y Cortadillo part of his Novelas Ejemplares (Exemplary Novels).
Voltaire's French novel Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...
(1759) contains elements of the picaresque. An interesting variation on the tradition of the picaresque is The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan (1824), a satirical view on early nineteenth century Persia, written by a British diplomat, James Morier.
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, who was influenced by Fielding, wrote his first six novels in the picaresque form, with Martin Chuzzlewit
Martin Chuzzlewit
The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit is a novel by Charles Dickens, considered the last of his picaresque novels. It was originally serialized between 1843-1844. Dickens himself proclaimed Martin Chuzzlewit to be his best work, but it was one of his least popular novels...
(1844) being the transitional novel to his later more serious and mature works. Other novels with elements of the picaresque include the Canadian Solomon Gursky Was Here
Solomon Gursky Was Here
Solomon Gursky Was Here is a novel by Canadian author Mordecai Richler first published by Viking Canada in 1989.-Summary:The novel tells of several generations of the fictional Gursky family, who are connected to several disparate events in the history of Canada, including the Franklin Expedition...
and the English The Luck of Barry Lyndon
The Luck of Barry Lyndon
The Luck of Barry Lyndon is a picaresque novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in serial form in 1844, about a member of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy...
(1844).
Some modern novelists have used some picaresque techniques, as Gogol in Dead Souls
Dead Souls
Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol...
(1842–52). Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by...
(1884) was consciously written as a picaresque novel
20th and 21st centuries
Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
's Kim
Kim (novel)
Kim is a picaresque novel by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published serially in McClure's Magazine from December 1900 to October 1901 as well as in Cassell's Magazine from January to November 1901, and first published in book form by Macmillan & Co. Ltd in October 1901...
(1901) combined the influence of the picaresque novel with the modern spy novel. The illustrated The Magic Pudding
The Magic Pudding
The Magic Pudding: Being The Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and his friends Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff is an Australian children's book written and illustrated by Norman Lindsay. It is a comic fantasy, and a classic of Australian children's literature....
(1918), by Australian author Norman Lindsay
Norman Lindsay
Norman Alfred William Lindsay was an Australian artist, sculptor, writer, editorial cartoonist, scale modeler, and boxer. He was born in Creswick, Victoria....
, is an example of the picaresque adapted for children's literature.
The Enormous Room
The Enormous Room
The Enormous Room is a 1922 autobiographical novel by the poet and novelist E. E. Cummings about his temporary imprisonment in France during World War I....
is E. E. Cummings
E. E. Cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...
' 1922 autobiographical novel about his imprisonment in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
on unfounded charges of "espionage", and it includes many picaresque depictions of his adventures as "an American in a French prison". Jaroslav Hašek
Jaroslav Hašek
Jaroslav Hašek was a Czech humorist, satirist, writer and socialist anarchist best known for his novel The Good Soldier Švejk, an unfinished collection of farcical incidents about a soldier in World War I and a satire on the ineptitude of authority figures, which has been translated into sixty...
's The Good Soldier Švejk
The Good Soldier Švejk
The Good Soldier Švejk , also spelled Schweik or Schwejk, is the abbreviated title of a unfinished satirical/dark comedy novel by Jaroslav Hašek. It was illustrated by Josef Lada and George Grosz after Hašek's death...
(1923) was the first example of the picaresque technique in Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
. J.B. Priestley made excellent use of the form in his enormously successful The Good Companions
The Good Companions
The Good Companions is a novel by the English author J. B. Priestley.Written in 1929 , it focuses on the trials and tribulations of a concert party in England between World War I and World War II. It is arguably Priestley's most famous novel, and the work which established him as a national figure...
(1929) and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize
James Tait Black Memorial Prize
Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English language and are Britain's oldest literary awards...
for Fiction. Many other novels of vagabond life were consciously written as picaresque novels, such as Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
's Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Cancer (novel)
Tropic of Cancer is a novel by Henry Miller which has been described as "notorious for its candid sexuality" and as responsible for the "free speech that we now take for granted in literature." It was first published in 1934 by the Obelisk Press in Paris, France, but this edition was banned in the...
(1934)..
Camilo José Cela
Camilo José Cela
Camilo José Cela y Trulock, 1st Marquis of Iria Flavia was a Spanish novelist and short story writer. He was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Literature "for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man's vulnerability".-Biography:Cela published his...
's La familia de Pascual Duarte (1942). Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
's The Adventures of Augie March
The Adventures of Augie March
The Adventures of Augie March is a novel by Saul Bellow.It centers on the eponymous character who grows up during the Great Depression...
(1953) is a picaresque novel with bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
traits. George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser, OBE was an English-born author of Scottish descent, who wrote both historical novels and non-fiction books, as well as several screenplays.-Early life and military career:...
's novels about Harry Flashman (1969) combine the picaresque with historical fiction. Günter Grass
Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author, poet, playwright, sculptor and artist.He was born in the Free City of Danzig...
's The Tin Drum
The Tin Drum
The Tin Drum is a 1959 novel by Günter Grass. The novel is the first book of Grass's .- Plot summary :The story revolves around the life of Oskar Matzerath, as narrated by himself when confined in a mental hospital during the years 1952-1954...
(1959).
Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the "Spaghetti Western" genre.Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots...
identified his spaghetti westerns, more specifically his Dollars trilogy
Dollars Trilogy
The "Dollars Trilogy" , also known as the "Man with No Name Trilogy", refers to the three Spaghetti Westerns starring Clint Eastwood and directed by Sergio Leone: A Fistful of Dollars , For a Few Dollars More , and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly .A Fistful of Dollars is an unofficial remake of...
(1964), as being in the picaresque style.
Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author who wrote The Rum Diary , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 .He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to...
's "gonzo journalism
Gonzo journalism
Gonzo journalism is a style of journalism that is written without claims of objectivity, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first-person narrative. The word "gonzo" is believed to be first used in 1970 to describe an article by Hunter S. Thompson, who later popularized the style...
" (1970) can be seen as a hybrid of fictional picaresque with memoir and traditional reporting. The picaresque elements are especially prominent in Thompson's less journalistic, more literary and psychotropically themed works, such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (novel)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is an autobiographical novel by Hunter S. Thompson, illustrated by Ralph Steadman. The book is a roman à clef, rooted in autobiographical incidents. The story follows its protagonist, Raoul Duke, and his attorney, Dr...
(1971) and The Great Shark Hunt
The Great Shark Hunt
The Great Shark Hunt is a book by Hunter S. Thompson. Originally published in 1979 as Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time, the book is a roughly 600-page collection of Thompson's essays from 1956 to the end of the 1970s, following the rise of the author's...
(1979).
Recent examples are Jerzy Kosinski
Jerzy Kosinski
Jerzy Kosiński , born Józef Lewinkopf, was an award-winning Polish American novelist, and two-time President of the American Chapter of P.E.N.He was known for various novels, among them The Painted Bird and Being There...
's The Painted Bird (1965), Rita Mae Brown
Rita Mae Brown
Rita Mae Brown is an American writer. She is best known for her first novel Rubyfruit Jungle. Published in 1973, it dealt with lesbian themes in an explicit manner unusual for the time...
's Rubyfruit Jungle
Rubyfruit Jungle
Rubyfruit Jungle is the first novel by Rita Mae Brown, remarkable, in its day, for its explicit lesbianism. The novel is a bildungsroman/autobiographical account of Brown's youth and emergence as a lesbian author...
(1973), John Kennedy Toole's
John Kennedy Toole
John Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, best-known for his posthumously published novel A Confederacy of Dunces. He also wrote The Neon Bible. Although several people in the literary world felt his writing skills were praiseworthy, Toole's novels were rejected...
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel written by John Kennedy Toole, published by LSU Press in 1980, 11 years after the author's suicide. The book was published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy and Toole's mother Thelma Toole, quickly becoming a cult classic, and later a...
(1980), Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende Llona is a Chilean writer with American citizenship. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits and City of the Beasts , which have been commercially successful...
's Eva Luna
Eva Luna
Eva Luna is a novel written by Chilean novelist Isabel Allende in 1985 and translated from Spanish to English by Margaret Sayers Peden.Eva Luna takes us into the life of the eponymous protagonist, an orphan who grows up in an unidentified country in South America...
(1987), Edward Abbey
Edward Abbey
Edward Paul Abbey was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental...
's The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel (1988), Robert Clark Young
Robert Clark Young
Robert Clark Young is an American author of novels, essays, short stories and journalism. Recurring themes in Young's fiction include the relation between alcoholism, the abuse of power, and institutional dysfunction in American life, while his nonfiction has recently focused on eldercare topics...
's One of the Guys
One of the Guys
One of the Guys is an earnestly satirical and picaresque novel by Robert Clark Young, published in 1999, concerning the fantastical adventures of a man posing as a chaplain on a U.S...
(1999), Helen Zahavi
Helen Zahavi
Helen Zahavi is an English novelist and screenwriter. Before becoming a writer she worked as a Russian translator, and has spent several years living in Paris....
's Dirty Weekend
Dirty Weekend (novel)
Dirty Weekend is a novel by Helen Zahavi, adapted into a film two years later by Zahavi and acclaimed director Michael Winner. In the US it was first published under the title The Weekend; some editions are subtitled "A Novel of Revenge"....
(1991), C. D. Payne's Youth in Revolt
Youth in Revolt
Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp is a 1993 epistolary novel by C. D. Payne. The story is told in a picaresque fashion and makes heavy use of black humor and camp...
(1993), Christian Kracht
Christian Kracht
Christian Kracht is a Swiss novelist and journalist.-Early life:Kracht was born in Saanen. His father, Christian Kracht Sr., was chief representative for the Axel Springer publishing company in the 1960s. Kracht attended Schule Schloss Salem in Baden and Lakefield College School in Ontario, Canada...
's Faserland
Faserland
Faserland is the debut novel by Christian Kracht, published in 1995. It is considered to have triggered the new wave of German pop literature. It is the swan song of the generation of the 80's, whose characteristics are so carefully described in the book that it has been called the "cult novel of...
(1995), Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson
Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction.Difficult to categorize, his novels have been variously referred to as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk...
's Quicksilver
Quicksilver (novel)
Quicksilver is a historical novel by Neal Stephenson, published in 2003. It is the first volume of The Baroque Cycle, his late Baroque historical fiction series, succeeded by The Confusion and The System of the World . Quicksilver won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was nominated for the Locus...
(2003) and Aravind Adiga
Aravind Adiga
Aravind Adiga is an Indian writer and journalist. His debut novel, The White Tiger, won the 2008 Man Booker Prize.-Early life and education:...
's "The White Tiger
The White Tiger
The White Tiger is the debut novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga. It was first published in 2008 and won the Man Booker Prize in the same year. The novel provides a darkly comical view of modern day life in India through the narration of its protagonist Balram Halwai...
" (Booker Prize 2008).
Some science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
and fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
books also show a clear picaresque influence, transported to a variety of invented worlds—for example, The Dying Earth
The Dying Earth
The Dying Earth is a 1950 collection of fantasy short stories by author Jack Vance. It is the first book in the Dying Earth series. It was nominated for the Retro Hugo in 2001.-Stories:*Turjan of Miir*Mazirian the Magician*T'sais...
series of Jack Vance
Jack Vance
John Holbrook Vance is an American mystery, fantasy and science fiction author. Most of his work has been published under the name Jack Vance. Vance has published 11 mysteries as John Holbrook Vance and 3 as Ellery Queen...
, Fritz Leiber
Fritz Leiber
Fritz Reuter Leiber, Jr. was an American writer of fantasy, horror and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theatre and films, playwright, expert chess player and a champion fencer. Possibly his greatest chess accomplishment was winning clear first in the 1958 Santa Monica Open.. With...
's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are two seminal sword-and-sorcery heroes appearing in stories written by Fritz Leiber . They are the protagonists of what are probably Leiber's best-known stories....
, James H. Schmitz
James H. Schmitz
James Henry Schmitz was an American writer born in Hamburg, Germany of American parents.- Life :Aside from two years at business school in Chicago, Schmitz lived in Germany until 1938, leaving before World War II broke out in Europe in 1939.During World War II, Schmitz served as an aerial...
's The Witches of Karres
The Witches of Karres
The Witches of Karres is a novel by James H. Schmitz. It is his best known book, and is considered a science fiction classic. It falls within the genre of space opera and features well-developed characters, a mix of both fantasy and hard science fiction as well as a sense of humor...
and L. Sprague de Camp
L. Sprague de Camp
Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography. In a writing career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and notable works of non-fiction, including biographies of other important fantasy authors...
's Novarian series
Novarian series
The Novarian series is a sequence of fantasy stories by L. Sprague de Camp, published between 1968 and 1989. The series contains some of de Camp's most innovative works of fantasy, featuring explorations of various political systems, an inversion of the "rags to royalty" pattern characteristic of...
. The genre-bending fiction of Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith, to which he converted after marrying into the religion. He is a prolific short story writer and a novelist, and has won many awards in the...
combines strong elements of the picaresque with a catalog of other forms of fiction—bildungsroman, memoir, mythic poem, classical drama, modernist fiction, and others. This is the case particularly in his Book of the New Sun, the tale of Severian the Torturer's rise to the monarchy in a remote future world that is probably Earth.
Characterization
A Lazarillo or picaro character is an alienated outsider, whose ablility to expose and ridicule individuals compromised with society gives him a revolutionary stance. Lazarillo states that the motivation for his writing is to communicate his experiences of overcoming deception, hypocrisy and falsehood (desengaño).See also
- Becky Sharp (character)Becky Sharp (character)Becky Sharp is the anti-heroine of William Makepeace Thackeray's satirical novel Vanity Fair . A cynical social climber who uses her charms to fascinate and seduce upper-class men, Sharp is contrasted with the clinging, dependent heroine Amelia Sedley...
- Adventure novelAdventure novelThe adventure novel is a genre of novels that has adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main theme.-History:...
- Milesian taleMilesian taleThe Milesian tale originates in ancient Greek and Roman literature. According to most authorities, it is a short story, fable, or folktale featuring love and adventure, usually being erotic and titillating. M. C...
- maqamaMaqamaMaqāma are an Arabic literary genre of rhymed prose with intervals of poetry in which rhetorical extravagance is conspicuous. The 10th century author Badī' al-Zaman al-Hamadhāni is said to have invented the form, which was extended by al-Hariri of Basra in the next century...
Further reading
- Robert AlterRobert AlterRobert Bernard Alter is an American professor of Hebrew language and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967.-Biography:...
(1965) Rogue's progress: studies in the picaresque novel - Garrido Ardila, Juan Antonio El género picaresco en la crítica literaria, Madrid, Biblioteca Nueva, 2008.
- Garrido Ardila, Juan Antonio La novela picaresca en Europa, Madrid, Visor libros, 2009.
- Meyer-Minnemann, Klaus and Schlickers, Sabine (eds) La novela picaresca: Concepto genérico y evolución del género (siglos XVI y XVII), Madrid, Iberoamericana, 2008.