The Lazarillo Phenomenon: Essays on the Adventures of a Classic Text (review)

Editors Reyes Coll-Tellechea and Sean McDaniel aim at revitalizing the study of the Lazarillo by encouraging novel studies that ask new questions by employing a reader-response, contextualized approach, rather than the over-wrought debate over whether or not the picaresque is a literary genre and, if so, where the Lazarillo fits within it. They are reframing the Lazarillo to foment new, fruitful studies that break away from the traditional themes and perspectives, for in their opinion, the field of “Lazarillo studies has become stagnant” because many interesting aspects of the novel are hidden in the shadow of the overarching debate of the picaresque (9).

This anthology firmly pushes Lazarillo out of the shadow of the picaresque through its eight articles that address aspects of the novel including the dissemination of information and perception, food as a cultural code marker, women as the sole deliverers of charity, Lazarillo as an upside-down Odyssey, and the mastery in the narration. The broad collection of topics reinforces the importance of their approach and the need to include nontraditional sources in academic studies.

The core of Coll-Tellechea’s and McDaniel’s approach is to view literary works as “instruments” rather than “artifacts;” that is—as explained by McDaniel in his article—to view texts as capable of influencing other texts and producing other versions that, albeit differing from the original, are just as important. McDaniel wants to focus the study of the picaresque on the reception and function of the texts—including subsequent editions, which are deemed to be either inferior or adulterations of an original text. This emphasis on reader-response enables the critic to see the texts’ functions in relation to its audience and social environment.

The editors’ intent of contextualizing and historicizing the Lazarillo to gain a better understanding of the society in which it was created and read is captured in all of the articles included in this anthology. In his particularly illuminating article, “The Spanish Inquisition and the Battle for Lazarillo: 1554-1555-1573,” Reyes Coll-Tellechea deftly demonstrates the importance of sequels and different versions of the same text by examining the influence that the Segunda Parte de Lazarillo de Tormes and the Lazarillo Castigado had on the 1554 version of Lazarillo de Tormes. Coll-Tellechea beautifully weaves the history of the Lazarillos with the political interests of the Inquisitor Fernando de Valdés, the creator of the Index of Forbidden Books, and shows how the sequel of the Lazarillo is what prompted the inclusion of the 1554 version in the Index.

As part of their approach, the editors also oppose to the usage of terms such as “Golden Age literature”—which they view as a romanticized term born from the desire to form a national character—and “Picaresque Novel”—viewed by the editors as an inadequate label due to a lack of consensus regarding which works belong in the genre and which ones do not. They explain that the criteria to label a novel as “picaresque” utilize arbitrary parameters that lead us to two main problems: 1) they create a cluster of novels that share some basic similarities but whose vast differences are often diminished or even dismissed for the sake of emphasizing their similarities; and 2) they ignore other works—like the direct continuations of the Lazarillo—that share the same purposes and intentions for their creation as those of the canonical works, but that do not quite conform to the arbitrary construction of the criteria.

In spite of their disagreement with the usage of the term picaresque, they do not offer an alternate term—perhaps to keep themselves from falling into the very topic they are advising the critics to avoid. However, one cannot replace something with nothing and, by not providing an alternate term, they end up using it themselves, albeit sometimes by preceding it with “so called.” Their response to the usage of the term and of different...