"This is the first graphic novel adaptation of Lazarillo de Tormes, an anonymous sixteenth-century work that is credited with founding the literary genre of the picaresque novel. This genre includes not only works by Spanish authors like Miguel de Cervantes but also famous novels in English and American literature featuring the "anti-hero." This edition offers a new approach to old questions about a book that has puzzled readers and critics alike for centuries. Who was its mysterious author? Why did the Inquisition forbid this seemingly harmless book? Who read the book and how was it understood? These and other questions are recreated in the graphic novel, offering a broader vision of the fortunes and adversities that this book "lived" and how against all odds it became a literary classic. Translated and retold for the modern reader, Lazarillo de Tormes offers a complete visual experience of the adventures and misadventures of the ultimate picaresque anti-hero as well as insights into the history of the book that set a precedent in Spanish literature."--

Rico illuminates the point of view of the narrator in three of the greatest picaresque novels.

Since the sixteenth century, Western literature has produced picaresque novels penned by authors across Europe, from Alemán, Cervantes, Lesage and Defoe to Cela and Mann. Contemporary authors of neopicaresque are renewing this traditional form to express twenty-first-century concerns. Notwithstanding its major contribution to literary history, as one of the founding forms of the modern novel, the picaresque remains a controversial literary category, and its definition is still much contested. The Picaresque Novel in Western Literature examines the development of the picaresque, chronologically and geographically, from its origins in sixteenth-century Spain to the neopicaresque in Europe and the United States.

Exiled to the margins of society and surviving by his wits in the course of his wanderings, the picaro marks a sharp contrast to the high-born characters on whom previous Spanish literature had focused. In this illuminating book, Peter N. Dunn offers a fresh view of the gamut of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish picaresque fiction.

This critical interpretation of the origins of modern fiction follows the transformation of the picaresque novel over four centuries through the literature of Spain, France, England, Germany, Russia, and the United States. Blackburn uses for the first time the resources of myth criticism to demonstrate how the picaresque masterpieces of the Spanish Golden Age founded a narrative structure that was continued by Defoe, Smollett, Melville, Twain, and Mann. Originally published in 1979. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.