Picaresque Novel

Picaresque Novel

Picaresque novel is an early form of novel which is usually a first-person narrative, related to the adventures of a rogue or lowborn adventurer (Spanish pícaro) who drifts from place to place and from one social milieu to another in his effort to survive. Unlike the idealistic hero the picaro is a cynical and amoral rascal who, if given half a chance, would rather live by his wits than by honourable work. Picaresque novels typically adopt a realistic style, with elements of comedy and satire. The picaresque novel originated in Spain with Lazarillo de Tormes in the year 1554 and flourished throughout Europe for more than 200 years, though the term "picaresque novel" was only coined in 1810. It continues to influence modern literature.

In the meantime, however, the picaro had made his way into other European literatures after Lazarillo de Tormes was translated into French, Dutch, and English in the later 16th century. The first picaresque novel in England was Thomas Nashe’s Unfortunate Traveller; or, The Life of Jacke Wilton(1594).  In Germany the type was represented by H.J. von Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus (1669) The outstanding French example is Alain-René Lesage’s Gil Blas (1715–35), which preserves a Spanish setting and borrows incidents from forgotten Spanish novels portrays a gentler, more-humanized picaro.

Definition

According to the traditional view of Thrall and Hibbard (first published in 1936), seven qualities distinguish the picaresque novel or narrative form, all or some of which an author may employ for effect:

·         A picaresque narrative is usually written in first person as an autobiographical account.

·         The main character is often of low character or social class. He or she gets by with wits and rarely deigns to hold a job.

·         There is no plot. The story is told in a series of loosely connected adventures or episodes.

·         There will be little if not no change in the character development in the main character. Once a pícaro, always a pícaro. Their circumstances may change but they rarely result in a change of heart.

·         The pícaro's story is told with a plainness of language or realism.

·         Satire is sometimes a prominent element.

·         The behavior of a picaresque hero or heroine stops just short of criminality. Carefree or immoral rascality positions the picaresque hero as a sympathetic outsider, untouched by the false rules of society.

16th and 17th centuries

An early example is Mateo Alemán's Guzmán de Alfarache (1599), Francisco de Quevedo's El buscón (1604) is considered the masterpiece of the subgenre by A. A. Parker

 

18^th and 19^th Centuries

In the mid-18th century the growth of the realistic novel with its more-elaborated plot and its greater development of character led to the final decline of the picaresque novel, which came to be considered somewhat inferior in artistry. But the opportunities for satire provided by the picaresque novel’s helped to enrich the realistic novel and contributed to that form’s development in the 18th and 19th centuries. Elements of the picaresque novel proper reappeared in such mature realistic novels as Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers (1836–37), Nikolay Gogol’s Dead Souls (1842–52), Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Thomas Mann’s Confessions of Felix Krull (1954).

20th and 21st centuries

Kvachi Kvachantiradze is a novel written by Mikheil Javakhishvili in 1924.This is, in brief, the story of a swindler, a Georgian Felix Krull, or perhaps a cynical Don Quixote, named Kvachi Kvachantiradze: womanizer, cheat, perpetrator of insurance fraud, bank-robber, associate of Rasputin, filmmaker, revolutionary, and pimp

The Twelve Chairs (1928) and its sequel, The Little Golden Calf (1931), by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov became classics of the 20th century Russian satire and basis for numerous film adaptations.