Approaches to Teaching Lazarillo de Tormes and the Picaresque Tradition

Anne J. Cruz

Modern Language Association of America, 2008 - Fiction - 173 pages

In 1554, Lazarillo de Tormes, a slim, unassuming little volume, unsigned by the author, made its first published appearance in the bookstalls of several important mercantile centers in Spain and the Netherlands. Since then, as narratives of pícaros—and pícaras—continued to follow in the footsteps of Lázaro's fictional life, picaresque literature developed into a major genre in literary studies that remains popular to this day.

Yet the genre's definition is anything but simple, as the diversity of this volume demonstrates. Part 1, "Materials," reviews editions and translations of Lazarillo and other picaresque works, as well as the critical and historical resources related to them. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," explore the picaresque's place in language and literature classrooms of all levels. Some contributors contextualize Lazarillo in the early modern Spanish culture it satirizes, investigating the role of the church and the marginalization of Muslims and Jews. Others pair Lazarillo with Alemán's Guzmán de Alfarache or Quevedo's Buscón to concentrate on the genre's literary aspects. A cluster of essays focuses on teaching the picaresque (including the female picaresque) to nonspecialist students in interdisciplinary courses. The volume concludes with a section devoted to the picaresque novel's influence on other literary traditions, from early modern autobiographies, such as Teresa of Ávila's Libro de la vida, to post-Spanish Civil War texts to twentieth-century Latin American novels and 1950s American beat narratives.

Contents

• Editions: 13
• Contexts for Teaching Lazarillo de Tormes: 28
• Lazarillo in Its Original Version: 55

About the author

Anne J. Cruz is professor of Spanish at the University of Miami. Her research interests focus on gender and genre studies in early modern Spain; she has published on Petrarchism in Garcilaso and Boscán and on the picaresque novel, and, with Mihoko Suzuki, she is preparing a collection of essays on early modern women rulers. She is the editor of Hispanisms, a series with University of Illinois Press, and is president of the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Approaches to Teaching Lazarillo de Tormes and the Picaresque Tradition; Volume 106 of Approaches to Teaching World Literature, ISSN 1059-1133
• Editor: Anne J. Cruz
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Modern Language Association of America, 2008
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Jun 25, 2010
• ISBN: 1603290168, 9781603290166
• Length: 173 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Language Arts & Disciplines / Study & Teaching; Literary Collections / European / Spanish & Portuguese; Literary Criticism / European / General; Literary Criticism / European / Spanish & Portuguese; Literary Criticism / General