The picaresque according to Cervantes
2010; University of Iowa; Volume: 89; Issue: 10 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0031-7977
Autores Tópico(s)Literary and Cultural Studies
ResumoThere is an unfortunate and enduring belief among non-Hispanist scholars that Miguel de Cervantes was a writer of and that his most famous protagonist, Don Quixote, is a (anti)hero. This misjudgment, mostly outside Spain, has historical roots, starting with Cervantes' own contemporaries, and has lasted to present. (1) The misunderstanding stems firstly from fact that many scholars are unfamiliar with Spanish picaresque. This is confounded by fact that Cervantes did indeed integrate numerous features of Spanish into several of his works, especially Don Quixote and his Exemplary Novels. However, this problem extends beyond Cervantes to a number of authors whose works have been lumped into with disregard what genre entails. W. M. Frohock brought attention to this fact by noting that non-Hispanists employ term picaresque so loosely that for every novelist to write a new novel there is at least critic waiting to find something in it. (2) More recently, Joseph V. Ricapito points out that even today one sees word 'picaresque' used in so many ways that the original sense of word has become blurred. (3) Unfortunately, Cervantes' fiction has not been immune to comparable assessments, but to deem Don Quixote a narrative and knight a picaro is to misunderstand both characteristics of Spanish and of generally accepted character traits of Spanish Golden Age picaros. (4) It is true that Cervantes was forced to cope with in some way, especially since Don Quixote (1605) was published on heels of Mateo Aleman's wildly popular narrative Guzman de Alfarache (1599), which went through more than twelve editions before its second part appeared in 1604. The Guzman is often credited with being most significant novel and marked both a resurgence of genre and its highpoint; it was often known simply as El Picaro. In fact, several other authors wished to capitalize on Aleman's instant success and brought out their own narratives immediately after: Mateo Lujan de Say avedra published a spurious second part to Guzman de Alfarache in 1602, (5) Francisco Quevedo wrote Historia de la vida de buscon, llamado Pablos [Life of Swindler called Pablos] (circulating in manuscript form as early as 1604 and later published in 1626), and Lopez de Ubeda published first female work, La picara Justina (1605). The opening years of seventeenth century saw a flurry of production, all of which took inspiration from original prototype, anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes, published in 1554 but censored and rereleased in expurgated form from 1573. Lazarillo, published in both Spain and Antwerp, marks origin of myth in Western literature by establishing solitary boy antihero along with literary setting, eventually yielding modern conception of narrative form. Amidst sudden--and perhaps unexpected--regeneration and reconstitution of picaresque, Cervantes may have completed as much as half or more of Don Quixote, which he sent to printer in 1605. (6) Other major works, Novelas ejemplares (1613) and second part of Don Quixote (1615), were likewise conceived, written, and published exactly at height of popularity of narratives. (7) Cervantes' most significant works were all published in midst of a surge brought about almost single-handedly by Aleman's Guzman de Alfarache. Aleman's masterpiece established an unsurpassed model during time period so that anything resembling automatically alluded to Guzman. (8) As Edward C. Riley points out, literary scene was abuzz with Guzman to such an extent that disquieting presence of Aleman's picaro could not have been ignored by contemporaneous writers concerned with attracting both a large readership and respect of serious critics, as Cervantes was. …
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