Lazarillo, Guzman, and Buffoon Literature

Abstract

In order to determine the relations that exist between picaresque literature and buffoon literature, we must first answer the following questions: What is buffoon literature? What are the thematic or structural characteristics that define it? When did it arise, and when did it disappear? We should immediately make it clear that this is not a type of literature that has a particular generic form: there are poems, chronicles, and novels that all fall under the heading of buffoon literature. Hence we must consider those particular thematic characteristics which define certain works as forming part of our suprageneric category. The first characteristic may be stated as follows: buffoon literature is defined by the presence of a buffoon either as the author of the novel, chronicle, or poem, or as the protagonist of the work. As we know, the figure of the buffoon first appeared in classical Greece and continued in Rome until the fall of the Empire, reappearing in the Italian city-states of the eighth and ninth centuries (Doran). In this medieval reappearance the figure of the buffoon was closely associated with that of the madman or fool, terms that were applied to characters that were stupid, that ignored the problems of this world, and that could thus receive the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, whose words would be reproduced by their mouths. In Spain the first reference to the buffoon appears in the anonymous Libro de la nobleza y lealtad, dedicated to the canonized king Fernando III; this buffoon is mentioned as an albarddn (Menendez