Lazarillo De Tormes Research Articles

The Mercedarian's Shoes (Perambulations on the fourth tratado of Lazarillo de Tormes)

In Lazarillo de Tormes, the fourth tratado is barely there. Much of what might be explicit is missing, and the little that is left is told with a reserve the narrator calls intentional. Amid two rather long tratados (one with the escudero, another with the buldero), the fourth is so miniscule it seems a mere precis, as if something got the tongue of the narrator, or some qualm left nothing to the narration, or even that the vast and busy (and sometimes conniving) memory started to lose momentum and fade. It can be read nearly in a single breath, though we cannot be sure where the innuendos (of contempt? of carousing humor?) should fall. We spot irony and censure in the air among the lapses or elipses; there is a slur of some scandal-anticlerical but not specific-with a handful of possible clues to the precise infractions. Here is the full text or what the author chooses to leave intact of it:

El Erasmismo en España

This study aspires at presenting the present state of the research carried out on Erasmianism in Spain. The basis for this is found in M. Bataillon, Erasmo y Espana (Mexico, 1966) and later contributions. It consists of five sections: Introduction, Birth, Apogee, Declivity, Fruits and Bibliography. In the Introduction, the author points out the origin and significance of the word Erasmianism, stresses its importance in Spain, indicates the main overall studies and shows the phases of its development. The birth was a late one (1516-1524). The oldest focal point is detected in Seville, place where the first translations in Spanish of the works of Erasmo were carried out. Soon after that, other local points emerged in Valencia where the oldest imitation of Moriae Encomium appears; in Alcala de Henares in whose University, the most sworn enemies together with his most enthusiastic admirers were often to be found, and in the Spanish Court where he had strong support. The new movement attained its apogee between 1525 and 1530, when the printer Miguel de Eguia brought to light various of Erasmo's works in Latin, particularly in the case of his Manual del Caballero Cristiano (The Christian Gentleman's Manual) in the Spanish version. The success was spectacular. The friars reacted denouncing Erasmo as a heretic but were not able to get him condemned in the Juntas (Boards) of Valladolid (1527). From this time on, Erasmo's books enjoyed a popularity little known in other countries. After 1530, the situation changes. The movement begins to experience a declivity phase, of persecution and of underground life (1530-1615). This leads to the Index forbidden books by Valdes (1559). The latter condemned not only several of Erasmo's works, but also those of other writers who had been contaminated by his ideas. The official repression was followd by a literary attack in which some of his own friends turned against him (1532- 1568). The author also relays the latest contributions on the influence of Erasmo in St. Ignatius of Loyola, friar Louis of Leon, friar Diego of Estella, Berito Arias Montano, el Lazarillo de Tormes, Cervantes and Carlos (Charles) V. Still to be clarified, however, is the influence of Erasmo in Miguel Servet and in other writers. Moreover, the full stock of Erasmo's works contained in the Spanish libraries is still to be looked into. Some of the samples taken recently have had surprising results. The fruits of Erasmism were abundant in the field of ecclesiastic renewal, inthat of predication, in catequethics, of bible studies and of literature, in the formulation of a new episcopal and priestly ideal, in the diffusion of a new ideal of laicist sanctity and in the birth of the Spanish school of prayer. The bibliography could perhaps be judged as useful. It is divided up into sources, global studies and specific studies. Each one of these sections follows and alphabetic order. The total sum of the entries is 140.

L�zaro's success

The subtlety that has been expended on showing that the book means the opposite of what it says is unnecessary and probably anachronistic. Lazarillo de Tormes makes sense if we take it at face value.

Lazarillo de Tormes: Erasmian Satire or Protestant Reform?

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.

A Case of Functional Obscurity: The Master Tambourine-Painter of Lazarillo, Tratado VI

Scholars have written relatively little concerning the sixth Tratado of La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, and about Lazarillo's sixth master, almost nothing. The latter has sometimes been overlooked entirely by commentators attracted to this complex text's larger issues. It must be admitted that the maestro de pintar panderos is but a small problem; he is scarcely mentioned before he passes into oblivion and his narrator moves on to other affairs judged more worthy of note. This neglected fellow exists in fact only in the following sixteen words, which I will set apart to give him, whoever he is, a moment of reprieve from the obscurity to which the narrator assigned him:

Narrative ‘errors’ inRinconete y Cortadillo

Narrative ‘errors’ in<i>Rinconete y Cortadillo</i>

Lazarillo de Tormes and the Quest tor Authority

The struggle between power, which enables the individual to participate in social exchange, and desire (resulting from an absence or lack), which isolates the individual from the social order, characterizes the sixteenth-century prototype picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes; and art is posited throughout as a means of attaining power. At each stage of this pseudoautobiography, the hero, functioning as both character (the young Lazarillo) and narrator (the adult Lázaro), depends on the use of rhetoric to influence others and change his station in life. The young trickster employs cunning wit in his struggle to integrate himself into a seemingly closed society, and the mature apologist, in his forced confession, an antiutopian transformation of the Augustinian confessional form, uses verbal art in an attempt to mediate the conflict between his desire and the power of authorities who still persecute him despite the degree of worldly success he has attained.

The Reformed Picaro and His Narrative: A Study of the Autobiographical Accounts of Lucius Apuleius, Simplicius Simplicissimus, Lazarillo de Tormes, Guzman de Alfarache, and Moll Flanders

The reformed picaro's narrative situation – an older moral or religious convert recounting the roguish adventuresof his earlier life– presents a problem which only the most skilled and conscientious of these picaresque narrators can begin to handle successfully. The moral reform or religious conversion undergone by the picaro is in most cases a spontaneous occurrence sparked by misfortune, despair, punishment, or the threat of death. Hence, no organic development, such as found in e.g. David Copperfield's narrative, links the narrated and narrating “I's” of the picaresque autobiography, creating a cleft which most of these little‐educated but verbally adroit narrators are unable to bridge successfully. For nine and one‐half books, Lucius Apuleius provides pure entertainment ranging from the lyrical to the bawdy, then tags on a fervent conversion in the final book in an apparent effort to avoid charges of total frivolity in his work. Lazarillo de Tormes' morality rings strident and hollow as he tries to defend his obviously disreputable status of lowly town‐crier and cuckold. Moll Flanders'various attempts at reform fall quick victim to “necessity” and natural weakness until she gains a large measure of prosperity in the Nc:w World; morality thus appears much too closely linked with material well‐being to be fully genuine. Guzman de Alfarache's similarly materialistic concerns, plus his past instances of hypocritical piety, make his promised reform (the incomplete work ends with this promise at the conclusion ofPart Two) less than totally convincing. Simplicius Simplicissimus comes the closest to presenting a convincing mixture of rowdy fun and sincere morality; but even his conversion, since it involves withdrawal from a sinful world rather than actual conquest of natural weakness and sin‐fulness, reveals for the modem reader the heart of the former picaro still beating in the new convert and compromising at least slightly the moral value of the latter's narrative.

The Deceptiveness of Lazarillo de Tormes

AbstractThe anonymous author of Lazarillo de Tormes is a master of deception. He makes his protagonist supremely attractive to the reader by contrasting him with unlikable characters (the blind beggar, the priest, the squire) and by the intimacy of autobiography. The reader increasingly sympathizes with Lazarillo, reaching in the third chapter a point of genuine admiration for the boy’s self-sacrifice at the time of greatest physical suffering. The author then creates an illusion of passing time to reach the book’s final scene, in which the mature Lázaro profits from the sexual exploitation of his wife. Lazarillo de Tonnes, comic only on a superficial level, presents a corrupt society that forces its materialistic values on even its most virtuous members; Lázaro, like all men, eventually compromises. The reader, so attracted by the young Lazarillo who dominates the work, often fails to see the odious Lázaro who finally emerges and obliterates his former self.

"Lazarillo de Tormes", Petrarch's "De remediis adversae fortunae", and Erasmus's "Praise of Folly"

In his most recent, and very important, study of Lazarillo de Tormes, Professor Lazaro Carreter has pointed out that certain interesting analogues to persons or situations in the Lazarillo are to be found in Erasmus's Praise of Folly. There is the similarity between the escudero and the type of person alluded to by Folly when she says she cannot pass over without mention ‘those who are no better than the humblest worker but take extraordinary pride in an empty title of nobility’ [‘… tamen inani nobilitatis titulo mirum quam sibi blandiuntur’]. Then there is the similarity between the Lazaro we see married to the archpriest's mistress and the husband who, according to Folly, ‘swears that the wife he shares with her many lovers outdoes faithful Penelope, and congratulates himself on what is a happy delusion’.

New Arguments in Favor of Mendoza's Authorship of the Lazarillo de Tormes

New Arguments in Favor of Mendoza's Authorship of the Lazarillo de Tormes

Lope de Rueda's Paso del Convidado and Cristóbal de Villalón

Bulletin Of The Comediantes Vol. XXI Spring, 1969 No. 1 Lope de Rueda's Paso del Convidado and Cristóbal de Villalón Cabboll B. Johnson University of California, Los Angeles In 1905 Manuel Serrano y Sanz, seeking to ascribe the anonymous Crotalón to the hand of the humanist Cristóbal de Villalón, observes in passing that an episode in the Crotalón, one in VillaIon 's El Scholástico and Rueda's Paso del Convidado all share the same plot.1 The source suggested by Serrano is not literature, but life itself — an incident which befell Villalón or one of his friends at the University of Alcalá. Cotarelo y Mori, following Serrano, attributes the Crotalón to Villalón, remarks the similarities to El Convidado, and suggests a real incident as the source.2 The same coincidence of plot was remarked by Marcel Bataillon as early as 1937, when he was intent on proving that in fact Villalón had not written the Crotalón.3 Professor Bataillon suggests, in contrast to Serrano and Cotarelo, that the story ultimately derives from the vast store of folklore and not from a real and recent incident. Bataillon's assertion that the Crotalón version is derived from the Scholástico is well founded. The Scholástico version is much the more sophisticated. It reveals a great concern with the narrative apparatus which sustains and encloses the anecdote. The narrator expresses misgivings regarding his ability to tell the tale successfully.4 In spite of these disclaimers he moves the story along expertly with a judicious combination of dialogue and narration, and allows the humorous dénouement to remain a surprise until the end. The "lesson" follows, and hence does not interfere with the story. The author of the Crotalón, in contrast, makes the story's point before it begins, thus destroying the humor and making the entire narration a kind of anticlimax.5 In addition, the Crotalón version makes practically no use of dialogue, which coupled with the lack of suspense further detracts from the reader's enjoyment of the anecdote. Besides these more or less literary criteria, Bataillon has insisted on the awkwardness of the language of the Crotalón, in contrast to Villalón's polished Castilian. On this basis I believe that we can discount the relevance of the Crotalón version, a graceless adaptation of Villalón's anecdote , to Rueda's paso. It seems reasonable , however, to posit some relation between Rueda and Villalón. Although Bataillon prefers to seek the anecdote's origin in folklore, it is not to be found in any of the standard collections of folk-tales and motifs.* While this negative evidence is not conclusive, it is entirely possible that Serrano was correct when he suggested a real incident as Villalón's source. Rueda's version appears to be basically an enlargement of Villalón's, with an expansion of focus from the plight of the host only to include the consternation of the guest as well, hence the name Convidado applied by posterity. In the Scholástico the two hosts are college room-mates. Their relationship is one of equals. In Rueda's paso they are Licenciado and Bachiller, that is, master and subordinate. Through their dialogue we can glimpse other phases of their life together. They begin to emerge as characters. For example, the exaggerated courtesy with which they address each other, besides being a straightforward satire of excessive concern for such formulas of courtesy, similar to what we find in the third Tratado of Lazarillo de Tormes, is a method of maintaining a certain mutual distance which enables their relationship to continue. Bach: Soy contento. ¡Ah, señor Licenciado Xáquima! Lie. : ¿ Llama vuesa merced, señor Bachiller Brazuelos? Bach: Sí, señor; salga vuesa merced acá afuera ( 184-185)7 This simultaneous play of attraction and repulsion reaches a crisis when the Licenciado finds himself forced to ask the Bachiller for a loan. Lie: Porque yo, para convidalle, no tengo blanca, ni bocado de pan, ni cosa, ofrézcola a Dios, que de comer sea, y por tanto querría suplicar a...

Imaginative Authority in Spanish Literature

Spanish literature in the Golden Age was a primary literature that produced an impressive number of new literary forms that were admired, copied, and naturalized throughout the rest of Europe. Rojas' La Celestina, Torres Naharro's Comedia Serafina, the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes, Tirso de Molina's El condenado por desconfiado, and Don Quixote provide examples of the “imaginative authority” of the older literature of Spain. This power of a piece of writing to assume a life of its own, its power to lead the audience wherever it pleases, is best understood in a religious context, since the authors of the works themselves wrote in a religious context. The end of literary study is not theological or moral instruction but elucidation of the intrinsic meanings of the work. Nevertheless, the proper model for the relation of the elucidator to the work is not that of the scientist to physical objects, but that of one man to another in charity. If the critic approaches the poem with this kind of reverence for its integrity, it will respond to questioning and take its part in the dialogue between reader and work which is the life of literary study.

La Ambigüedad Moral Del Lazarillo De Tormes

Lazarillo de Tormes cannot be considered simply as a story of the moral degeneration of a potentially good boy who, under the influence of his pitiless masters, becomes a selfish and cynical cuckold, utterly blind to his moral degradation. The episode with the Squire reveals that the mature Lazaro (as he declares it himself) still has deep feelings of pity and charity for the Squire and those like him, just as he did when he was still a boy. Thus, this most important of Christian virtues has not been lost in the adult picaro. The capacity for human compassion and sympathy which is clearly revealed in the style of the autobiography must also be assigned to Lazaro and not merely to the anonymous author. And it is Lazaro, in his own moral judgments, who tends to condemn those who are selfish and without charity but is sympathetic to those who are generous and weak, regardless of their social sins; e.g., Zaide steals for love, the priest and friar for lust and for themselves (“para sus devotas y para ayuda de otro tanto”). Lazaro's final situation contributes to the ironic twist: From an external or social point of view, he is at the bottom of the moral scale, but his capacity for charity elevates him when compared with his selfish and lecherous masters. It is this subtle irony, of which the author was probably conscious, both as an artist and as a satirist, that lends moral ambiguity, as well as artistic complexity, to the main character and to the total conception of the work.

Goya's Lazarillo de Tormes

To the Editor:— I should like to differ with the interpretation of the Goya painting called El Garrotillo on the front cover of JAMA for Oct 31, 1966. The statement that Goya in this picture portrays a physician examining the throat of a child is certainly the usual one. Actually, this painting illustrates a scene from the 16th-century picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes . Nigel Glendinning, writing in The Listener for Feb 20, 1964, states that the unpleasant-looking man is not a doctor at all, but Lazarillo's first master, the blind beggar. The evidence for this interpretation became apparent when we learned that Goya's painting illustrated a scene from the particular work of fiction mentioned above. With this knowledge all the strange details of the painting fall logically into place. The man's long nose is required by the story and is not an arbitrary contribution of the artist, since it is

The Death of Lazarillo de Tormes

In Contrast to the apologetic and ambiguous prologue of the Libro de buen amor, that preceding the Lazarillo de Tormes shocks us with its forthright arrogance: “Yo por bien tengo que cosas tan señaladas y por ventura nunca oydas ni vistas vengan a noticia de muchos y no se entierren en la sepultura del olvido.” The evasive ego of Juan Ruiz—an ego which, as Alfonso Reyes notes, is comic by mediaeval definition and slips with childish glee into one role after another—has been replaced by an explosion of self: “Yo por bien tengo …” The “soy quien soy” of the hero-braggarts of the “comedia” seems to have been combined with the autobiographical complacency of an Alonso de Contreras or a Pedro de Baeza. The result is that the reader, as soon as he becomes aware of the insignificance of the events so pompously announced, tends to read the prologue as a parody. If Lazarillo is an anti-hero, the prologue is appropriately an anti-prologue. The oral bombast of “cosas tan señaladas y por ventura nunca oydas ni vistas” sounds almost as if it were designed to hawk the “pliegos sueltos” of a “romance.” Prologues are by definition self-conscious, but in this one self-consciousness is driven to self-caricature.

Spanish: Raíz India by Rosario Beltran Núñez, Edited by Boyd G. Carter and Frances Summy Easter, New York, the Odyssey Press, 1961; La Vida De Lazarillo De Tormes Y De Sus Fortunas Y Adversidades, Edited by Everett W. Hesse and Harry F. Williams, Mad

Spanish: Raíz India by Rosario Beltran Núñez, Edited by Boyd G. Carter and Frances Summy Easter, New York, the Odyssey Press, 1961; La Vida De Lazarillo De Tormes Y De Sus Fortunas Y Adversidades, Edited by Everett W. Hesse and Harry F. Williams, Mad

Universality and Unity in the Lazarillo de Tormes

The Qualities of universality and unity in the Lazarillo de Tormes are interrelated factors through which the reader perceives and reacts to the reality presented although he does not identify himself in any way with the characters and scenes. This perception and reaction depend primarily upon three aspects of the novel: (1) the visualizing element, (2) multiple levels of humor, and (3) the unified concept of the total experience of a human being. Obviously the unknown author of the Lazarillo did not invent these characteristics, but rather fused qualities present in various literary types of his age. We shall be concerned here not with the relation of each aspect to a larger literary tradition, but with the manner in which each is utilized in the novel itself.

Lazarillo de Tormes, Classic and Contemporary

A reading of the recent novel by Camilo Jose Cela, Nuevas andanzas y desventuras de Lazarillo de Tormes,1 naturally brings to mind a comparison with its famous sixteenth century predecessor, La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades.2 Jose Maria de Cossio, within his necessarily brief Prologue to Cela's novel, makes a very interesting comparison, but perhaps a more detailed consideration, especially of this new Lazarillo de Tormes, may show further how it reveals a new attitude toward reality and a new aesthetic concept, reflecting the modern era, although retaining much of the spirit of the earlier novel. The form of the two novels is similar, the hero's autobiographical account of his life with his various masters. Each novel

The "Breadly Paradise" of Lazarillo de Tormes

Readers who have been intrigued by the second tratado of Lazarillo de Tormes will recall the battered chest (el arcaz) which the miserly priest stores the loaves of bread which are given to him by members of his flock in remembrance of their dear deceased. Readers are also familiar with the way which the same chest gradually becomes the focal point of the entire chapter as Lizaro, matching wits with his avaricious master, does all within his power to gain access to the forbidden loaves. What may be less immediately apparent, however, is the subtle manner which the unknown author of this picaresque novel has made the chest not merely the focal point of the action, but has, effect, endowed it with a symbolic value all its own.