V.V.(1) Carnival and the picaresque (1 of 2)

[jbor]

(Following up on Thomas's Notes):

The picaresque novel is a literary phenomenon originating in Spain and
deriving in part, perhaps, from oral traditions of carnival pageantry and
(usually grotesque) comic parody. It takes the form of an autobiographical
account of the adventures of a particular type -- a *pícaro*, or 'rogue' --
within contemporary society. The pícaro's search for happiness and
prosperity (his "quest") is often set in stark opposition to the prevailing
moral and political order, which provides the "central theme" or "problem"
to which the picaresque narrative is devoted. Helen Reed discloses the
search of the pícaro as the quest

   for a place *in* society. ... In contrast to the epic where
   the hero ventures forth *in behalf of* society, or romance where the hero
   sets out in quest of some far-off, otherworldly, mysterious goal
   *outside* society, the pícaro's aim is limited in scope, egotistical,
   ignoble, and of this world - to have enough money and food to survive and
   to find a place *within* society. (Helen H. Reed, *The Reader in the
   Picaresque Novel*, Tamesis, London, 1984, p. 21.)

The epistolary *Lazarillo de Tormes*, Mateo Alemán's *Guzman de Alfarache*,
Cervantes' *Don Quixote* (even though it is a parody of romance and other
genres rather than a true picaresque novel), and Francisco de Quevedo's *La
vida del Buscón llamada Don Pablos* are the seminal texts, and these and
each subsequent picaresque narrative also comprise, in large part, a series
of "metafictive" dialogues with their predecessors in the tradition. In
other words, intertextuality and parody are conscious and overt features of
the picaresque repertoire, as they are also in the postmodern novel:

   The implicit presence of "voices" other than that of the
   pícaro-protagonist in the picaresque novel ... [is] unmistakeable.
   Because of their innovative nature, the earliest picaresque novels
   appear to have been written with the reaction of the potential reader
   very much in mind. Those that followed were in part readers' (turned
   writers) responses to the earlier novels. ... Any writer of the
   picaresque novel was necessarily a reader of same, and in his own version
   of the picaresque would somehow record his response as a reader to his
   predecessors. A literary work is not only orientated toward its
   potential readers, but also toward pre-existing literary works.
                                                          (Reed, p. 26)

In *Don Quixote* this intertextuality takes the form of explicit analytical
commentary on prior texts -- in the second volume the Knight reads his own
exploits as narrated in the first and finds their representation there
hopelessly inadequate -- as well as more general consideration of the
substance and concerns of the picaresque mode.

Unlike other literary genres of the Middle Ages and Renaissance such as the
epic, courtly romance, pastoral, saint's life and moral fable, where form,
style and content were bound by convention and moral decorum, the directions
and contours of the pícaro's narrative are far more flexible. As Helen Reed
asserts, and reminiscent of the obsessive narrativisation and resistance to
closure in much postmodern fiction, the pícaro "cannot stop recounting his
life, because it is not over yet. ... Open-endedness and the demands on the
reader's active participation in arriving at the work's significance
distinguish the novel from earlier forms of fiction." (Reed, p. 29)

On this cf. also Robbe-Grillet's conclusion in his essay 'Time and
Description in Fiction Today' (1963), in *For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction
(translated by Richard Howard), Ayer, Salem, 1984 (1965):

   The author today proclaims his [sic] absolute need of the reader's
   co-operation, an active, conscious, creative assistance. What he asks of
   him [sic] is no longer to receive ready-made a world completed, full,
   closed upon itself, but on the contrary to participate in a creation, to
   invent in his turn the work -- and the world -- and thus to learn to
   invent his own life. (p. 156)