Byzantine Romance, Pastoral Novels, Lazarillo & Cervantes
Byzantine Romance
The Byzantine romance, or adventure novel, often features journeys through foreign lands, exotic islands, and seas, with more believable adventures than those in chivalric romances. Similar to its Greek model, it stars a pair of beautiful and chaste young lovers separated until the novel’s end. Their journey represents their confrontation with the world, overcome only with divine grace. In Spain, the young and chaste hero seeks love, becoming a pilgrim, symbolizing Christian man, and the journey a religious pilgrimage.
Narrative Resources
- Beginning “in medias res”
- Interpolation of stories
Pastoral Novel
Originating from Greek storytellers and Latin poets, the pastoral novel connects the bucolic setting with the courtier, offering a key to understanding allusions to real people and events. It features two types of actions: one in the present, slow, and another in the past, told through stories of idealized shepherds who behave and speak like courtiers, emphasizing chastity. The pastoral setting represents an ideal world, an escape from reality, a “locus amoenus.”
Narrative Techniques
- Beginning “in medias res”
- Interpolation of stories
- Emphasis on dialogue, limiting the narrator’s role
Other Narrative Models
Celestinesque Novel
16th-century texts influenced by the tragicomedy Callisto and Melibea.
Sentimental Novel
Popular in the first half of the 16th century, exploring unhappy passion and historical events.
Romance of Chivalry
Medieval stories of love and heroic knights, evolving into Christian knights fighting infidels and later, gentleman adventurers.
Moorish Novel
Evokes 15th-century life on the Castile-Muslim kingdom border, using real place names, unlike the romances of chivalry.
Lazarillo de Tormes
Story Summary
Abandoned by his family, Lázaro serves several masters and learns various trades. His life is structured in three modules:
- Childhood: (Blind man, Cleric, Squire) Lázaro learns to assist in mass, leading him to the cleric’s service, where his hunger grows. Constant mobility marks this period.
- Adolescence: (Friar, Painter, Pardoner, Chaplain) Marked by past experiences, Lázaro experiences sexual awakening and learns new arts of deception.
- Youth: (Chaplain, Bailiff, Archpriest) Lázaro settles, finds a trade, marries, and establishes a home, achieving professional success.
Irony in Lazarillo
- Protagonist’s Irony: Lázaro’s ironic self-awareness is evident when he reflects on the squire’s meager diet.
- Masters’ Irony: The blind man’s deceptive “cure,” the cleric’s empty words of encouragement, and the squire’s false promises reveal their hypocrisy.
- Author’s Irony: The author critiques societal issues through Lázaro’s experiences.
Themes
- Honor: Honor, dependent on social perception, is a recurring theme, especially in the squire’s story.
- Religion: Five of Lázaro’s masters are clergymen, highlighting the exploitation of the poor by a corrupt and uncultured clergy.
Narrative Works of Cervantes
La Galatea
A pastoral novel centered on love, with a simple plot set over ten days. It incorporates interpolated stories, poems, and debates, but remains unfinished.
Novelas Ejemplares
A collection of twelve realistic and idealistic, critical and conformist, burlesque and serious stories, incorporating various narrative styles and folklore. Most tell stories of thwarted love with happy endings, emphasizing friendship and verisimilitude.
The Persiles and Sigismunda
A posthumously published Byzantine novel, following the pilgrimage of two young lovers through northern Europe, facing dangers that test their love before marriage.