Abstract
Summary The Postmodernist problem of the relationship between “story” and “history” is approached via the picaresque. Certain characteristics of the Genre are assumed, notably that it concerns the autobiography of a traveller in the margin of conventional society, offering an ambiguous view of contemporary values. Cervantes transformed the picaro from rogue into outsider, internalising the notion of a journey by inserting it into language, and casting doubt on authoriality in autobiography. Noting the eighteenth century mistrust of “story”, the interaction between Moll Flanders and her society is evaluated, largely in terms of the dual narratorial voice, which complicates the notion of identity. This resides largely in language itself, involving not only the protagonist's name, but the invention of a self in interaction with others. Through the identification of language and money, the picara's journey is depicted in terms of a transaction; and it is suggested that Moll's alleged reduction of her world to...
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