Susanne Zepp
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780804787451
- eISBN:
- 9780804793148
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804787451.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
The third chapter focuses on the picaresque novel. Although the author of Lazarillo de Tormes, the first work of this genre, remains anonymous, the specifics of this text have repeatedly been ...
More
The third chapter focuses on the picaresque novel. Although the author of Lazarillo de Tormes, the first work of this genre, remains anonymous, the specifics of this text have repeatedly been interpreted with the author’s assumed Jewish or converso belonging in mind. The chapter offers a new interpretation of its literary form based on an archival discovery. These historical documents open up a new perspective on the first passage of Lazarillo de Tormes: One possible reading of the account given by the first-person narrator at the beginning of Lazarillo is that of a parody of the “genealogical information” which those suspected of being judaizante and those who applied for the appointment to or retention of a public office (which also included the office of town crier) had to submit to the Inquisition authorities.Less
The third chapter focuses on the picaresque novel. Although the author of Lazarillo de Tormes, the first work of this genre, remains anonymous, the specifics of this text have repeatedly been interpreted with the author’s assumed Jewish or converso belonging in mind. The chapter offers a new interpretation of its literary form based on an archival discovery. These historical documents open up a new perspective on the first passage of Lazarillo de Tormes: One possible reading of the account given by the first-person narrator at the beginning of Lazarillo is that of a parody of the “genealogical information” which those suspected of being judaizante and those who applied for the appointment to or retention of a public office (which also included the office of town crier) had to submit to the Inquisition authorities.
