Lazarillo de Tormes: A Graphic Novel by Enriqueta Zafra

Abstract

Reviewed by: Lazarillo de Tormes: A Graphic Novel by Enriqueta Zafra Debora Zamorano Zafra, Enriqueta. Lazarillo de Tormes: A Graphic Novel. U of Toronto P, 2021. Pp. 124. ISBN 978-1-4875-2938. Lazarrilo de Tormes, a graphical novel, is an innovative and captivating adaptation of one of the classics of Spanish Literature, the anonymous sixteenth-century work, Lazarillo de Tormes. Lazarillo was the bastard son of a prostitute. He works for various masters who teach him dirty ways to survive. His life with his different masters reveals the corruption in imperial Spain. This work created the picaresque novel, a genre that, according to the author, shows injustice while amusing the reader. Zafra’s graphic novel is based on the first four versions of the book as well as the censored version of 1573. One of Zafra’s objectives in writing her graphic novel is to explain the historical context of the original novel to the modern reader. Therefore, she concentrates the original novel history on different periods of time: before 1554, when the novel was first written; the period when it was first printed; the period when it was censored; and when it was published again after being censored. The author also mentions the combination of its final version and other works. Because the original book had many different editions, there is a chronological disruption of six centuries among these various editions of the book. These disruptions are captured in the structure of the book. The structure includes Zafra’s acknowledgments and the introduction, where she gives the reader an overview of the history of the original novel and the main differences [End Page 632] in her novel. Zafra then dedicates a page to the 1553 book, where she briefly explains the anonymity of the anti-hero. Following this, she displays the history of the first translation of the book and why it was translated from Spanish to English. Next, Zafra shows the readers the illustrations of the four editions of the book, and Lazarillo begins his case as the predecessor of many literary anti-heroes which leads to the first chapter of Zafra’s novel. In this first chapter, Lazarillo gives an account of his childhood. The author believes that the last conversation of the chapter, where Lazarillo accused religious people of robbing their flocks, possibly took place before the publication of the censored version of the book. Lazarillo went against powerful men in Spanish society at the time; hence the need to censor the book. The author then makes a pause in the story and details the characters implicated in Lazarillo’s editorial history. The editorial history is particularly important and clarifying for todays’ readers. As Zafra points out: “Our graphic novel reconstructs his [censor Juan López de Velasco] editorial input in an interactive way so that the reader is able to witness the reasons behind his decisions, his network and alliances and entrepreneurial approach to the export of his version to the American market” (xv). The following section mentions the importance of the year 1599, when the success of the censored Lazarillo version occurred. Through a funny conversation, Zafra depicts Miguel de Cervantes supposedly giving his opinion about the book. In chapter two, Zafra describes how Lazarillo settled down with a priest and what happened to him. Zafra then gives the story another pause to explain the conversations about the versions of the novel in 2019. The illustrations show a professor teaching to his students about the transformations and adversities of Lazarilo’s editorial history. Zafra then goes back to the story in the remaining chapters of her novel. One of the successes of the original book stems from its influencing of other books with similar style, such as works as Guzmán de Alfarache’s and Miguel de Cervantes’s works. Zafra follows the graphic novel Don Quixote (2011) by Rob Davis, adapted from the novel written by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605. This may be a reason why Zafra features Miguel de Cervantes as probably the ultimate reader of Lazarillo de Tormes in her graphic novel. In it, Zafra discusses how Cervantes could have reacted to some issues he might have had with...