Lazarillo de Tormes: Erasmian Satire or Protestant Reform?

Abstract

THE AUTHOR of Lazarillo de Tormes sought to please and instruct; most readers would acknowledge his success as an entertainer and if they were also critics, would probably differ as to his precise purpose while assigning him a general didactic intent. The disagreement about the specific intent of Lazarillo is as noticeable as its pervasive satire. Marcel Bataillon maintained that Lazarillo was not the labor of an Erasmian and that its satire contains nothing that had not been present in the anticlerical satire of the Middle Ages, nor does the novel present a positive doctrine of the Spirit, an essential element of Erasmian writing.' A. A. Parker justly observed that given the autobiographical form, it would have been difficult for Lazarillo to preach any such doctrine.2 Americo Castro baldly asserted that en el Lazarillo lo de menos es la critica y la doctrina.3 Contradictory assertions and assurances have never discouraged critics from looking for a religious message in Lazarillo and Manuel Asensio, employing Bataillon's criteria, makes a reasonable case for an Erasmian humanist as author and proposes Juan de Vald6s as his candidate, a candidacy rejected by Bataillon. Joseph Ricapito has recently published a valuable survey of Lazarillo scholarship to date, a study which offers the specialist a synoptic view of the many authorship theories. In an earlier work Ricapito urged the candidacy of Alfonso de Vald6s.4 No doubt there will be further scrutiny of both the authorship and the intention of Lazarillo. The present article proposes to offer a few observations on the doctrinal content of Lazarillo that might aid in narrowing the years of its composition and the field of author candidates.