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PICARESQUE NOVEL
INCEPTION AND EVOLUTION

AN INTRODUCTION TO PICARESQUE NOVEL

The picaresque novel (Spanish: "picaresca," from "pícaro," for "rogue"

or "rascal") is a popular genre of novel, usually a first –person narrative that
depicts the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who drifts from
place to place, one social milieu to another in his effort to survive and lives by
his wits in a corrupt society. The picaresque novel is a genre of prose fiction that
originated in 16th-century Spain and flourished in Europe in the 17 th and
18th centuries and has continued to influence modern literature.
According to the traditional view of Thrall and Hibbard, 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 wit 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 is little if any character development in the main character. Once a
picaro, always a picaro. His or her circumstances may change but they
rarely result in a change of heart.
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 The picaro's story is told with a plainness of language or realism.

 Satire is sometimes a prominent element.
 The behaviour 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.
In its episodic structure the picaresque novel resembles the long,
rambling romances of medieval chivalry, to which it provided the first realistic
counterpart. Unlike the idealistic knight-errant hero, however, the picaro is a
cynical and amoral rascal. The picaro wanders about and has adventures among
people from all social classes and professions, often just barely escaping
punishment for his own lying, cheating, and stealing. He is a casteless outsider
who feels inwardly unrestrained by prevailing social codes and mores, and he
conforms outwardly to them only when it serves his own ends.
Characteristically, the picaresque novel is anti-romantic in nature. It sharply
attacks the romance, courtly marriage and chivalry of the medieval literature.
Dr. Kettle is of the opinion, “What made their novel possible was the new
attitude to the world brought about by the decadence of feudal society.” The
picaro’s narrative becomes in effect an ironic or satirical survey of the
hypocrisies and corruptions of society, while also offering the reader a rich mine
of observations concerning people in low or humble walks of life. The
picaresque novel, a reaction against the absurd unrealities and idealism of the
pastoral, sentimental, and chivalric novels, represents the beginnings of modern
Realism.
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ORIGIN OF PICARESQUE NOVEL AND ITS ARRIVAL

IN ENGLISH LITERARTURE

The word picaro first starts to appear in Spain with the current meaning in
1545, though at the time it had no association with literature. The expression
picaresque novel was coined in 1810. While elements of Chaucer and Boccaccio
have a picaresque feel and may have contributed to the style, the modern
picaresque begins with Lazarillo de Tormes, which was published anonymously
in 1554.

Though the word picaro does not appear in Lazarillo de Tormes, it is

variously considered either the first picaresque novel or at least the antecedent of
the genre. The protagonist, Lázaro, lives by his wits in an effort to survive and
succeed in an impoverished country full of hypocrisy. Lázaro states that the
motivation for his writing is to communicate his experiences of overcoming
deception, hypocrisy, and falsehood. The character type draws on elements of
characterization already present in Roman literature, especially Petronius'
Satyricon.

The picaresque as a generic category originates in the Spanish Siglo de

Oro, with the two novels that constitute the core of its canon—the anonymous
Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) and Mateo Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache (1599,
1604). From a historical point of view, though, it is certain that the Spanish
picaroons actually existed in the sixteenth century Spain, in a society that gave
very little freedom to individuals, as it was a powerful, concentrated
monarchical system. Thus, from a social point of view, the picaroon was a
trouble-maker, one who wanted to transgress his social position and find
another, a more satisfactory one in terms of living conditions, especially. In
order to find such a better social standing, the picaroon had to be very attentive
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to what was happening around him, so, even unwillingly, he became a social
commentator.

After the other Spanish rogue stories appeared in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, Guzmán de Alfarache, La picara Justina, La hija de
Celestina, Marcos de Obregon, picaresque fiction soon spread all over Europe,
exerting a particularly important influence during the 17th and 18th centuries in
Germany, France and above all England. A study of the picaresque calls for a
dynamic, flexible, and open-ended model.

In France, Gil Blas became the iconic rogue, and in England, Tom Jones
and Moll Flanders. From now on, for many scholars the Spanish models started to
be less interesting, they gave more attention to the French and English stories, to
Le Sage, Defoe, and Fielding, as well as to Smolett, who with his Roderick
Random set a new type of discussion about the picaresque, which led to the
conclusion that the picaresque narratives are in a way
“disjointed, episodic, high-spirited and adventure stories”.
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PICARESQUE NOVEL IN ENGLISH

It is Geoffrey Chaucer, and his superb effort to summarize, construct and

deconstruct the writings of his age in order to undermine them, and then show
what literature was going to become. Bearing in mind that The Canterbury Tales
were written much before the emergence of the novel and that the picaresque itself
only appeared almost two centuries later, it is amazing to notice that five of the
seven points on Thrall and Hibbard’s list can be traced in this book.
After the unique case of Chaucer, one can consider the forefather of the
British picaresque, the first famous rogue tale in English is Thomas Nashe’s The
Unfortunate Traveller(1594). Besides Nashe, there were also Head and Kirkman
with their The English Rogue, a series type of stories about criminals, about
roguish villains that was also very popular.

Of the canonical authors connected with the rise of the British novel,
Defoe, Fielding, and Tobias Smollett display the greatest debts to the picaresque.
Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders had appeared before the great picaresque creations
of Smollett and Fielding. The main difference between Moll and the other rogues,
except for her being a woman, is the fact that her author has her change her heart
when she sees the possibility of being punished for her crimes. Her wit, though,
her capacity to adopt to any situation, her irony and her invariable choice to
survive even if she has to sacrifice ‘values’ and ‘moral integrity’, as well as her
inclination towards mobility make her one of the best examples of British rogues.
In Defoe’s roguish novels, there is not just an indictment of society, as in older
picaresque but an earnest effort to reform it, as witnessed by the social projects and
legislative reforms advocated in Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack(1722).

This background offered Henry Fielding the proper momentum for his
novelistic debut. Henry Fielding proved his mastery of the form in Joseph
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Andrews (1742), The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great (1743) and The History of
Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749). He “...employed the genre of criminal biography in
Jonathan Wilde, which is of course in the picaresque mode. ...Tom Jones... is cleverly cast by
his creator as a rogue”. Another picaresque novel is Fielding’s The Journey from this

World to the Next, which prefigures insofar as its quixotic narrative is concerned.
Besides the use of the rogue as a mirror, Fielding also introduces another very
important element for a true rogue story — the metamorphoses of the character
under the pressure of the conditions and adventures he goes through. Fielding
etches a theory of morally mixed characters, neither wholly good nor bad, which is
indebted to picaresque techniques. Nevertheless, Fielding’s most important
heritage is Quixotic rather than picaresque; he depicts heroes who act benevolently
in a world that is not too corrupt for goodness.

It is Smollett to a greater extent than Fielding who tackles – and masters ---
the picaresque tradition in the mid eighteenth century. He wrote The Adventures
of Roderick Random, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751), The
Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), The Adventures of Ferdinand Count
Fathom (1753) are Smollett was coarse and drew a sharp, critical caricature of
society, because he actually followed the tradition of the picaresque: the picaroon
is characterized by this total lack of morals and by this sharp look upon society that
he sees with no illusions at all, as it is, nude and real. George Orwell speaks about
this formidable quality of the eighteenth century writers, generally, and Smollett’s
particularity, to show reality as it is, unlike the ‘modern’ writers, less skilful, but
more effective. The Adventures of Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle are
two of the best satires of English society, farcical and witty.

Fortunate or unfortunate, immoral or amoral, redeemed or not, the picaros

and picaras of the eighteenth century British literature are at the foundation of
literature in English as we know it today. At the same time, they brought with them
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a few of the immanent characteristics of British literature: an inclination towards

satire, towards oddity and acid laughter, and towards social critique mixed with
benevolent comedy. They invented a gallery of memorable and emblematic
characters, very specific for the society of their times.
After a time lapse of century, with Dickens and his extraordinary talent for
inventing characters, the rogue is not necessarily only the title-hero of his novel,
for example Pickwick Papers. In the Critical Approaches to Fiction, Shiv Kumar
and Keith McKean consider that all these novels, from Smollett to Dickens,
“Share one important ingredient: the adventures are arranged as a series of consecutive
time units. History assumes a progressive linear form.”
Charles Dickens is always cited in connection to the English picaresque, by
mentioning hi ‘American’ novel, Martin Chuzzlewit. Obviously, Martin’s journey
to America, with all his observations belongs to the picaresque, both in style, and
in the themes it engages. After having named the two most commonly and widely
appreciated novels in terms of the picaresque, there come other critics saying that,
in fact, there are some picaresque elements in Nicholas Nickelby, too, as well as in
David Copperfield, and especially in Oliver Twist, with all that infamous gallery of
low-casts. John Jordan in The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens
considered that he combined the picaresque imagination with the melodramatic
imagination.
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CONCLUSION : CONTINUITY OF THE GENRE

“I grow up — am hated by my relations — sent to School — neglected by my

Grandfather — maltreated by my Master — seasoned to Adversity — I from Cabals
against the Pedant — am debarred Access to my Grandfather — hunted by his heir — I
demolish the Teeth of his Tutor” ( Smollett, The Adventures of Roderick Random, 21).
The first person narrative, the general disposition, or initial predicament of the
rogue-hero, his natural inclination towards violence, cheating and escapism — all
are present in this short reference, as it is a very good illustration of how most of
the eighteenth (and nineteenth century, subsequently) looked like.
Gogol occasionally used the technique, as in Dead Souls (1842–52). Mark
Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) was consciously written as a
picaresque novel. Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901) combined the influence of the
picaresque novel with the modern spy novel. Pío Baroja's novel Zalacain the
Adventurer, published in 1909, used the picaresque format in the context of the
Carlist Wars. The illustrated book The Magic Pudding (1918), by Australian
author Norman Lindsay, is an example of the picaresque adapted for children's
literature. Recent examples include Under the Net (1954) by Iris Murdoch,
Thomas Berger's Little Big Man (1964), Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird
(1965), Vladimir Voinovich's The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private
Ivan Chonkin (1969), Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus (1984), Edward
Abbey's The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel (1988), 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).
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REFERENCES:

Name of books which is used:

 ELEMENTS OF THE PICARESQUE IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH

FICTION by Ligia Tomoiagă
 THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BRITISH LITERATURE 1660 - 1789 Set,
Volume 1 by Gary Day
 THE PICARESQUE NOVEL IN WESTERN LITERATURE edited by J.
A. Garrido Ardila