Lazarillo de Tormes: A Realistic 16th-Century Novel
It is a realistic narrative; facts are recounted as if they had occurred. The border between reality and fiction fades, taking an important step towards the creation of the modern novel by proposing that the work be read as if it were true. It is the starting point of the European realist novel. The characters change throughout the circumstances of their lives, and the protagonist changes from the beginning to the end of the work.
Structure
Foreword and 7 chapters. The latter reveals that the work is a response letter explaining one case: Lazarus’s relationships with women and the Archpriest of San Salvador. The other 6 chapters are divided into two parts:
- Top 3 (longer): Lazarus’s learning in adversity.
- Next 3: Starting to improve their living standards.
Style
There is a big difference between the language of this work and the usual narratives of the time. It uses plain, spontaneous language, devoid of artifice, which agrees with the realism of the work. The prologue is constructed in accordance with the rules of classical rhetoric, but with ironically heightened language.
Idea and Meaning of the Work
The word that opens the prologue is a resounding “me.” The play is the story of a character with typical features of a human being of flesh and blood, far from the stylized figures of contemporary accounts. The character lives in a particular social environment that conditions him. The book relates the learning process while adapting to a complex social environment. This adaptation is at the expense of the person’s own dignity, who assumes the social rules and norms. He only achieves ultimate prosperity in exchange for consenting to the personal disgrace of his wife’s relationship with the Dean.
This indignity is common to all characters in the book, and the play is seen as an indictment of society and an obsession with honor and religion. There is also a clear anti-clericalism (the majority of Lazarus’s masters are clerics). It also mocks justice and military life. The character values are material: ambition, greed, money, cunning, and cynicism. The author reveals the cruel reality of life in mid-16th-century Spain through jokes and sarcastic humor.
The model proposed in the Lazarillo story is so innovative that it was difficult to assimilate and continue. Nearly half a century later, the second picaresque novel appeared: Guzman (1599).
Miguel de Cervantes
Italian cultured comedy approaches the common folk in a popular mode (proverbs, jokes). The *pasos* or *entremeses* (the most common name being *paso*) are very well known. These are short comic pieces. Topic: love. Language: popular. Two major cities are highlighted for the development of drama: Valencia and Seville. The Aragonese author Argensolas is stressed. Juan de la Cueva, from Seville, addresses historical issues of the theater in *Seven Infants of Lara*.
Study and Anthology
Lazarillo of Tormes
Text – Date – Author
First appeared in 1554 (4 different editions). Notable success. Forbidden in 1559. Permitted in 1573 (but incomplete/censored). The full text was published again in 1834. We do not know the date of composition. In the play, there are historical references that can be placed between 1510 and 1546.
Author: Anonymous. Could be an Erasmian, a convert, a Marrano, a Franciscan, or a noble discontented with society.
Sources – Structure – Style
Sources: Folk tradition – stories (that of the sausage) – Even the blind man and the waiter. New: work so stuck and not a simple sum of adventures. The story consists of a series of organized and hierarchical events. Two structural models:
- Autobiography (with a long literary tradition, *Libro del buen amor*).
- Epistle, carrying sentimental tradition. For example, *Jail of Love*.
The direct source for Lazarillo’s autobiography is Apuleius’s Latin novel, *The Golden Ass*. In the play, all the elements make sense because they are part of a character’s life told by himself along the lines of a letter to a stranger, “your grace.” It uses data taken from reality in the work: places, geographical references, social life characters, allusions to problems at the time, and specific historical references.