The Picaresque Novel Origin & Chief Features
The Picaresque Novel Origin & Chief Features
The Picaresque novel is the most striking type of novel that first originated in Spain and soon spread to France and England. The term ‘Picaresque’ is derived from the Spanish word ‘picaro’ which means ‘a wandering rogue’. This type of novel is centered on the hero who is a picaro or rogue—a man outcast or neglected by his society and thus he rejects his society as well as morality and ethics. The hero of the Picaresque novel is the travelling hero who posts from inn to inn, from region to region from one country to another, from town to town and mixes with all sorts of men including rogues, thieves and robbers in course of his adventures and travelling and suffers from every sort of vicissitudes. The plot of this type of novel is hero centered and consists of a series of thrilling adventures and incidents that happened to the hero. The plot of the Picaresque novel is very loose and the plot changes with the change of place of the hero. This type of novel is generally written, though not always, in the autobiographical method. The first Picaresque novel was Lazarillo de Tormes written in the Spanish language anonymously in 1554. Following the Spanish Picaresque novel, English novelists began to write this type of novel abundantly. Some exemplary English Picaresque novels are—Thomas Nash’s The Unfortunate Traveller, Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, Smollett’s Roderick Random etc. 0 0 0.
N. B. The article ‘The Picaresque Novel Origin & Chief Features’ originally belongs to the book entitled ‘ The Laws of Literature‘ by Menonim Menonimus
Books on Literary Criticism by M. Menonimus:
- World Short Story Criticism
- World Poetry Criticism
- World Drama Criticism
- World Novel Criticism
- World Essay Criticism
- Indian English Poetry Criticism
- Indian English Poets and Poetry Chief Features
- Emily Dickinson’s Poetry-A Thematic Study
- Walt Whitman’s Poetry-A Thematic Study
- Critical Essays on English Poetry
- Tawfiq al-Hakim’s Novel: Return of the Spirit-An Analytical Study
- Tawfiq al-Hakim’s Novel: ‘Yawmiyyat Naib Fil Arayaf’-An Analytical Study
- Analytical Studies of Some Arabic Short Stories
- A Brief History of Arabic Literature: Pre-Islamic Period (500 AD-622 AD)
- A Brief History of Arabic Literature: Early Islamic Period (622 AD-661 AD) …
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