V.V. (1) Picaresque novel

[jporter]

> From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>

> 
> Yes, I think that perhaps the larger point that I was trying to get at (and
> I'm not sure that Eco would disagree either) is that "the novel" as a
> discrete and marketable literary form directly derives from the Spanish
> picaresque (through *Don Quixote*). In a sense all novels are picaresque,
> (meta-)representing as they do the *author's* journey through a (real or
> imagined) social setting. Thus is the author of novelistic fiction (like) a
> pícaro; and postmodern fictions are very self-conscious about this aspect of
> their genesis. Think too of Pynchon's comment at the end of the *Slow
> Learner* 'Intro' about the "picaresque life" the Beats "seemed to us to be
> leading" and his consciousness of his own corollary transition from
> 'apprentice' to 'journeyman'. (21-22)
> 
> best

I wouldn't think so, except maybe from the masculine point of view. Surely
the first readers were women, and the first novels love stories, not the
bizarre repressed homoerotic longings of Don Quijote and gilligan, er,
sancho.

jody