Picaresque Narrative, Picaresque Fictions: A Theory and Research Guide (review)

REVIEWS 167 in fact occurred, but soon admits, widi most disarming candour, diat diere is a paucity of real evidence. He then devotes the closing pages to very deftly half-demolishing his own earlier arguments. Finally, Jerry Beasley's "Life Episodes: Story and Its Form in the Eighteendi Century" attempts to elucidate a broad range of fiction, from "Bunyan to Godwin," by stressing its "episodic form," which, he suggests, reflects "one of the truly central ideas governing the pioneering writers who so regularly employed it" (p. 22). The concept seems to me rather blurry, and while it works fairly well with some audiors (for example, Smollett and Sterne), it does not fit Bunyan, much less Fielding, who is inexplicably grouped with Smollett and Richardson as a novelist who "placed the discovery of meaning before die discovery of appropriate form in die process of artistic creation" (p. 26). An andiology of this kind deserves to be judged widi an emphasis on what is best in it. Robert Uphaus's taste was generally good, and he has put togedier a useful collection. Thomas R. Cleary University of Victoria Ulrich Wicks. Picaresque Narrative, Picaresque Fictions: A Theory and Research Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989. xvi + 367pp. US$59.95. For scholars and critics of eighteendi-century fiction, Ulrich Wicks's bibliographical survey and dieoretical assessment of die picaresque initially appear to hold little interest. Its dieoretical chapters barely touch upon Smollett, Defoe, and Lesage and regard die genre itself as hopelessly confused in die period. An extensive "Guide to Basic Picaresque Fictions " (part 2) includes substantive discussion of only Roderick Random, Moll Flanders, Gil Bias, and Grimmelshausen's Simplicius Simplicissimus and 77ie Runagate Courage, and offers briefer comments on Colonel Jack, Roxana, The English Rogue, and The Life and Death ofMr. Badtnan. Yet Wicks's endeavour to define the characteristics of me genre proves to be an essential tool for studying die development of eighteendi-century fiction. Scholars may be unwilling to accept his definition of die picaresque as "used historically to designate a special episode in die evolution of fictional forms and ahistorically to designate a universal kind of narrative" (p. 45). And diey may reject as too easy his resolution of questions of genre by calling "die broader uses ... modes and die narrower uses genres" (p. 45). Nevertheless, widi his command of bodi primary and secondary materials and die insights that he draws from postmodernist critical tíieory, he presents a body of material that will allow readers to form their own conclusions about a literary form diat had major importance in the period. Wicks begins widi die "sketchiest of surveys" (p. 15) of die general history of die genre. He combines description of various works widi brief comments on diem by contemporary and subsequent critics. Confined witìiin a dozen pages, Wicks's overview does justice neidier to die texts, criticism, nor his own views of die subject. Not only are diere difficulties in defining die picaresque, but diere are serious questions about die meaning of genre and the nature of the generic process. It would require a great deal more space to offer satisfactory responses to die questions Wicks raises. Wicks's commentary is often shrewd and generally helpful, aldiough he himself does not always take advantage of it. He accurately pinpoints the main features of picaresque narrative mediod, structure, content, and tone. Widi his general comment on genre—"A 168 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 3:2 genre would be truly sterile if every work in it recapitulated die prototype" (p. 12)— Wicks is right on die mark. Nevertheless, he ignores dûs insight when he fails to see how a novelist like Smollett adapts odier genres to die picaresque and plays off die expectations of die form, diereby extending it. For Wicks, Smollett, abetted by Sir Walter Scott, was "responsible for many of die major misconceptions of die picaresque that still haunt theory and criticism in English." By "using both Don Quixote and Gi/ Bias as models ... die eighteendi-century novelists created a case of literary mistaken identity" (p. 14). More effective is Wicks's account of how literary scholarship has treated die genre. Distinguishing between two critical...