Approaches to Teaching Lazarillo de Tormes and the Picaresque Tradition
- Editor: Anne J. Cruz
- Pages: viii & 173 pp.
- Published: 2009
- ISBN: 9781603290173 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603290166 (Hardcover)
“The collection of essays may be most fruitful for those teachers, whether experienced or novice, who are exploring ways to teach Lazarillo and the Spanish picaresque in an interdisciplinary context.”
—Danae T. Orlins, Sixteenth Century Journal
“This excellent range of essays will prove extremely useful in the teaching of Lazarillo and its widespread successors. The volume does a superb job of addressing directly a host of pedagogical questions encountered by all who teach these texts.”
—Nina Davis, Washington University
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.
Amy Aronson-Friedman
Robert Bayliss
Wilfrido H. Corral
Soledad Fox
Edward H. Friedman
Yolanda Gamboa
Thomas Hothem
Monique Dascha Inciarte
Encarnación Juárez-Almendros
Maryrica Ortiz Lottman
Howard Mancing
Patricia W. Manning
Mark J. Mascia
John C. Parrack
Carmen Peraita
Joseph V. Ricapito
Kathryn A. Walterscheid
Enriqueta Zafra
Preface to the Series (ix)
Introduction (1)
PART ONE: MATERIALS
Editions (13)
Translations (14)
Recommended Student Readings (15)
Instructor’s Library (16)
Audiovisual and Internet Resources (19)
PART TWO: APPROACHES
Introduction (23)
Contexts for Teaching Lazarillo de Tormes (28)
The Arabic Precursors of the Spanish Picaresque (28)
Identifying the Converso Voice in Lazarillo de Tormes (36)
Lazarillo de Tormes as Cultural Artifact (43)
Food for Discussion: Starving and Eating in Lazarillo de Tormes (49)
Renaissance Books Are Different: Lazarillo in Its Original Version (55)
Textual Approaches to the Picaresque Novel (62)
“Whodunit?”: Teaching Lazarillo de Tormes to Undergraduate Students through the Unknown Author (62)
The Apocryphal Interpolations of Alcalá: Textuality and the Act of Rereading (67)
Formalism and Stylistic Analysis as Applied to Lazarillo de Tormes (74)
The Rhetoric of Interpretation: The Case of Quevedo’s Buscón (79)
Coming to Grips with the Text of Guzmán de Alfarache (86)
The Picaresque Novel in Interdisciplinary Courses (92)
Bridging the Contextual Gulf: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Teaching Lazarillo (92)
Teaching Lazarillo de Tormes to Nonspecialist Undergraduates (98)
The Pícaro as Guide to the Academic Essay (103)
Teaching the Role of Prostitution in the Female Picaresque (108)
Teaching the Picaresque Tradition (113)
Teaching Lazarillo and the Picaresque in the Autobiographical Tradition (113)
The Literature of Survival: The Neopicaresque after 1939 (119)
Teaching the Spanish American Picaresque Novel: From El Periquillo Sarniento to Ángeles del abismo (127)
Some Avenues into the Anglo-American Picaresque (135)
Notes on Contributors (143)
Survey Participants (147)
Works Cited (149)
Index (169)
