Road-book America

Road-book America
Author: Rowland A. Sherrill
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2000
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780252025464

In Road-Book America, Rowland A. Sherrill explores how the old picaresque tradition, embodied in such novels as Henry Fielding's Tom Jones and Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, opens to include a number of recent American texts, both fiction and nonfiction. Sketching the socially marginal, ingenuous, travelling characters common to old and new versions of the genre, Road-Book America is a wide-ranging and sophisticated discussion of the "new American picaresque", exemplified by William Least HeatMoon's Blue Highways, John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, James Leo Herlihy's Midnight Cowboy, Bill Moyers's Listening to America, E. L. Doctorow's Billy Bathgate, and hundreds of other narratives published in the past four decades. Open, resilient, adaptable, and perennially hopeful, the protagonist of the new American picaresque follows a therapeutic path for the alienated modern self and lays the groundwork for spiritual renewal.

The Picaresque Novel in Western Literature

The Picaresque Novel in Western Literature
Author: J. A. Garrido Ardila
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2015-05-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 131629854X

Since the sixteenth century, Western literature has produced picaresque novels penned by authors across Europe, from Alemán, Cervantes, Lesage and Defoe to Cela and Mann. Contemporary authors of neopicaresque are renewing this traditional form to express twenty-first-century concerns. Notwithstanding its major contribution to literary history, as one of the founding forms of the modern novel, the picaresque remains a controversial literary category, and its definition is still much contested. The Picaresque Novel in Western Literature examines the development of the picaresque, chronologically and geographically, from its origins in sixteenth-century Spain to the neopicaresque in Europe and the United States.

The Picaresque

The Picaresque
Author: Carmen Benito-Vessels
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1994
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780874134582

"Like cartographers after the Treaty of Versailles, contemporary critics of picaresque literature are hard at work redrawing lines and polemicizing boundaries in an attempt to resolve prevailing problems of definition and method. To reevaluate this canon of texts and to address critical issues, a group of internationally renowned scholars gathered in April 1989 for a two-day conference, "The Picaresque: A Symposium on the Rogue's Tale," which was held at the University of Maryland at College Park and sponsored by the Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies in conjunction with the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. The essays in this volume grew out of this scholarly exchange and map out an unusually broad landscape of contemporary critical concern." "The volume opens with an essay by Marina S. Brownlee, which addresses whether there is an "essential feature, configuration, or environment that determines the presence of a picaresque text." In his study of classicity in the Spanish Golden Age, Joseph V. Ricapito examines the Perez translation of the Odyssey and its link with the Spanish picaresque genre. Bruno M. Damiani's essay focuses on Lozana Andaluza as an important link between Celestina and the Lazarillo and investigates traits common in the later novel of roguery. "The Picaresque and Autobiography" by Randolph D. Pope examines the split vision of autobiography in Golden Age picaresque. Calhoun Winton looks into the rise of the picaresque novel in seventeenth-century London printing and publishing practice. Studying pamphlets, chapbooks, and periodicals, he poses the question: By whom were these examples of the picaresque mode written, for what reward, and with what audience in mind? Jerry C. Beasley's "Translation and Cultural Translatio" addresses questions of the translation of picaresque texts and the impact of this genre on novelistic discourse throughout Europe. In his essay Gerald Gillespie contextualizes Grimmelshausen's The Adventurous German Simplicissimus in French comic and satiric and Spanish disillusionistic modes. Nancy Vogeley examines Lizardi's Don Catrin de la Fechenda in the context of the Enlightenment and redefinition and politicization of the concepts of vice and virtue and discusses how these changing thought patterns facilitated the task of American writers who were then rethinking their political and moral landscape. Jerome Christensen's essay on Lord Byron investigates with primary and secondary textual sources the meaning of picaresque in Don Juan, establishes the vitality of the genre in this work, and looks into the distinction made between tuum and meum. The closing essay, Mario M. Gonzalez's "The Brazilian Picaresque," presents an overview of the genre in Brazilian literature." "This volume represents the diversity of scholarly approaches to the study of picaresque and opens up new questions concerning the picaresque canon, especially regarding its criteria for the definition of parameters that include elements from classical antiquity to contemporary theory."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Picaresque and the Writing Life in Mexico

The Picaresque and the Writing Life in Mexico
Author: Jorge Téllez
Publisher:
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2021-05-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9780268200176

This book studies picaresque narratives from 1690 to 2013, examining how this literary form serves as a reflection on the material conditions necessary for writing literature in Mexico. In The Picaresque and the Writing Life in Mexico, Jorge Téllez argues that Mexican writers have drawn on the picaresque as a device for pondering what they regard as the perils of intellectual and creative labor. Surveying ten narratives from 1690 to 2013, Téllez shows how, by and large, all of them are iterations of the same basic structure: pícaro meets writer; picaro tells life story; writer eagerly writes it down. This written mediation (sometimes fictional but other times completely factual) is presented as part of a transaction in which it is rarely clear who is exploiting whom. Highlighting this ambiguity, Téllez's study brings into focus the role that the picaresque has played in the presentation of writers as disenfranchised and vulnerable subjects. But as Téllez demonstrates, these narratives embody a discourse of precarity that goes beyond pícaros, and applies to all subjects who engage in the production and circulation of literature. In this way, Téllez shows that the literary form of the picaresque is, above all, a reflection on the value of literature, as well as on the place and role of writing in Mexican society more broadly. The Picaresque and the Writing Life in Mexico is a unique work that suggests new paths for studying the reiteration of literary forms across centuries. Looking at the picaresque in particular, Téllez offers a new interpretation of this genre within its national context and suggests ways in which this genre remains relevant for reflecting on literature in contemporary society. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Latin American studies, Mexican cultures and literatures, and comparative literature.

The Picaresque

The Picaresque
Author: Giancarlo Maiorino
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1996
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780816627233

"Picaresque Tales" - parodic narratives relating the adventures of a rogue - have been central to the development of Spanish literature since the time of Cervantes. This text incorporates poststructuralist theory into a comprehensive treatment of such tales written during the Spainish Golden Age. The essays in this volume examine such works as "Lazarillo de Tormes", "Guzman de Alfarache" and "El buscon". The contributors address the connection between literary representation and everyday life, examining the context in which the Picaresque mode developed.

Rogue's Progress

Rogue's Progress
Author: Robert Alter
Publisher: Cambridge, Harvard U.P
Total Pages: 178
Release: 1964
Genre: Lazarillo de Tormes
ISBN:

Elements of the Picaresque in Contemporary British Fiction

Elements of the Picaresque in Contemporary British Fiction
Author: Ion Piso
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1443838527

This study looks back at the picaresque, with its Spanish roots, and especially with its tradition in English literature; then, it comes to contemporary times, and identifies elements of the picaresque in contemporary novels. The main thesis of the author is that the picaresque has never left the literary scene in Britain, being an aesthetic invariant, which expresses a natural inclination of the British authors towards the picaresque story. Postcolonial authors also favour this genre as a consequence of their own literary tradition, which includes particular variants of the picaresque, and as a result of their own situation as immigrant/displaced authors, which gives them material for stories of displaced characters – rogues. The study rigorously identifies the sources of the contemporary protocols of the picaresque, as well as a few variants of picaresque stories in a selection of novels the author accounts for theoretically.

The Picaresque and the Writing Life in Mexico

The Picaresque and the Writing Life in Mexico
Author: Jorge Téllez
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2021-05-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0268200165

This book studies picaresque narratives from 1690 to 2013, examining how this literary form serves as a reflection on the material conditions necessary for writing literature in Mexico. In The Picaresque and the Writing Life in Mexico, Jorge Téllez argues that Mexican writers have drawn on the picaresque as a device for pondering what they regard as the perils of intellectual and creative labor. Surveying ten narratives from 1690 to 2013, Téllez shows how, by and large, all of them are iterations of the same basic structure: pícaro meets writer; pícaro tells life story; writer eagerly writes it down. This written mediation (sometimes fictional but other times completely factual) is presented as part of a transaction in which it is rarely clear who is exploiting whom. Highlighting this ambiguity, Téllez’s study brings into focus the role that the picaresque has played in the presentation of writers as disenfranchised and vulnerable subjects. But as Téllez demonstrates, these narratives embody a discourse of precarity that goes beyond pícaros, and applies to all subjects who engage in the production and circulation of literature. In this way, Téllez shows that the literary form of the picaresque is, above all, a reflection on the value of literature, as well as on the place and role of writing in Mexican society more broadly. The Picaresque and the Writing Life in Mexico is a unique work that suggests new paths for studying the reiteration of literary forms across centuries. Looking at the picaresque in particular, Téllez offers a new interpretation of this genre within its national context and suggests ways in which this genre remains relevant for reflecting on literature in contemporary society. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Latin American studies, Mexican cultures and literatures, and comparative literature.

Play and the Picaresque

Play and the Picaresque
Author: Gordana Yovanovich
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 182
Release: 1999-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780802047045

Analyses three important Latin American novels in an attempt to redefine the nature of the picaresque, especially in regard to the roles of spontaneous play and carnivalesque laughter.

Microhistory and the Picaresque Novel

Microhistory and the Picaresque Novel
Author: Binne de Haan
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2014-10-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1443869589

In the sixteenth century, the picaresque novel introduced marginal figures (wanderers, beggars and thieves) as the protagonists of elaborate prose narratives, thus appearing to give a voice to hitherto unrepresented social types. This raises several questions as to the referentiality of the picaresque text, pertinent both to historians and literary scholars alike. Microhistory can help investigate this referentiality of the picaresque text, by revealing how particular historical agents perceived marginals and marginality, and juxtaposing these agent perspectives to the literary representation. Microhistory and the Picaresque Novel is the first publication to combine scholarship on the picaresque novel and the practice of microhistory. This innovative volume argues that the approach of microhistorical studies, such as The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg, Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist by Giovanni Levi and The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis, can be used to shed new light on classic picaresque novels such as Guzmán de Alfarache, Gil Blas, Grimmelshausen, and their many epigones. The volume brings together expert scholars on the picaresque novel such as Professor Robert Folger, on the one hand, and established microhistorians such as Professor Giovanni Levi, on the other. This exploration is further enriched with contributions by Professor Matti Peltonen, an expert on history theory, and Professor Hans Renders, an expert on biography studies, as well as providing case studies from recent research by the editors Binne de Haan and Dr Konstantin Mierau.