Life of Lazarillo de Tormes

Life of Lazarillo de Tormes

Published anonymously due to its anticlerical content, the Spanish novella of Lazarillo de Tormes is considered to be the founding work of the picaresque novel, a literary genre with comedic, parodic, and satirical elements. The picaresque novel tells the adventures of a hero (pícaro) who comes from the lower social classes, but knows how to assert himself in a corrupt world with cunning and shrewdness. The anonymous work was written before 1530 and was probably first printed in Burgos in 1552/53. The earliest three printings that survive today all date from the year 1554 and were published in the cities of Alcalá de Henares, Burgos and Amberes.

The Society from the Worm's Eye View

The story of Lazarillo, a boy from poor circumstances in Salamanca, is told in the first person perspective by the hero himself. This life confession is part of a fictional letter that Lazarillo addresses to an unknown reader who is supposed to assist him in a current dispute involving his employer, the archbishop, and his wife. Lazarillo's autobiography depicts, in episodic sequence, the various working conditions through which the boy passes after his mother sends him to apprenticeship, whereby social advancement is ironically accompanied by progressively worse working conditions. Lazarillo develops cunning strategies to assert himself: first he serves a blind beggar, then a clergyman, an impoverished knight, a friar, an indulgence preacher, a chaplain, and an archpriest. **The story thus takes the reader on a journey through 16th-century society and presents it from the worm's-eye view, that is, from the lowly perspective of the social outsider. In this way, the novel form a sharp contrast to the whitewashing romances about knights and shepherds that were still very popular at the time, such as the successful Amadis novel. Here, no fairy-tale wishful world is depicted, but the oppressive reality of living conditions at the bottom end of society. The simple, catchy prose of the Lazarillo novel also contrasts with the linguistically imaginative poetry of other works of the time.

Inspiration for the modern anti-hero.

It is not surprising that this provocative work, which was equally scathing of both the Catholic Church and the Spanish aristocracy, was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books by the Spanish Inquisition after only a short time, in 1559. After that, it could only appear in a purified form as "Lazarillo castigado" (1573); the explosive original version, on the other hand, was not allowed until the 19th century. The work is truly a milestone of the golden age of Spanish literature, the Siglo de Oro, and was translated into several languages during the 16th and 17th centuries. The mischievous figure of Lazarillo de Tormes has had a lasting influence on all other European literatures, and his prominent descendants include Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote and Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus. Even popular anti-heroes of modern film and television (Forrest Gump, for example) are ultimately inspired by and stand in the long tradition of this first Spanish picaro of world literature.