2010 NEH Summer Seminar: Literary Pícaros and Pícaras and Their Travels in Early Modern Spain

June 20-July 18, 2010 (4 weeks)

Anne J. Cruz, University of Miami
Adrienne L. Martín, University of California - Davis

Department of Modern Languages
and Literatures
University of Miami
P.O. Box 248093
Coral Gables, FL 33124-2074
305/284-5585
nehspainseminar@miami.edu
(Seminar locations in Spain: Madrid,
Salamanca, Toledo, Seville)

With its emphasis on the life story of a young rogue or pícaro, the picaresque novel remains today one of the most popular forms of fiction. The sixteenth-century Spanish novel Lazarillo de Tormes is credited as the first picaresque work, as its protagonist, the young Lazarillo, sets the tone for the wily ways in which pícaros (and pícaras) trick their masters and hilariously narrate a life of delinquency that, they insist, is not their fault, since they were born into poverty and needed, against all odds, to survive. As a new literary genre, one that reacted against the idealizing poetry and fiction of the time, the picaresque gives voice to the marginalized and the poor and brings a dose of “reality” to Renaissance prose. By doing so it offers an ideal means of studying both the literature and the history of early modern Spain. Because Spain’s diminishing imperial glory depended on maintaining armies at war and ruling distant colonies, the fun and humor of these novels barely manage to conceal a dark and somber side that reveals the sufferings of the country’s poor. While their slippery narrators tell their story in the first person and attempt to justify their delinquent actions, the authors of the narratives utilize their tales to criticize a corrupt and degraded society.

This is the tumultuous literary genre that we will study in situ while visiting the cities where pícaros plied their trade and learned to survive. Lazarillo was born on the outskirts of Salamanca, literally on the banks of the River Tormes. While the pícaro received his education through the school of hard knocks, students flocked to the University of Salamanca, the first university in Spain. Toledo, Lazarillo’s and his first master’s destination, was the seat of the Spanish empire. Cervantes’s Rinconete and Cortadillo, and Mateo Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache all shared experiences in the underworld of Seville, a port city that saw delinquency rise as the American fleets docked there, bringing treasures of gold bullion and silver from the New World to the Old. Pablos, Quevedo’s buscón prides himself on being from Segovia, which at the time had lost many of its workers to Madrid. Pablos and María de Zayas’ female pícaras traveled to Spain’s new capital, Madrid, in the hopes of bettering their condition, disguising themselves as wealthy nobles and hiding their lower-class origins in the city’s anonymity.

For more information, see the following website: http://www.as.miami.edu/personal/neh/