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The picaresque tradition stems from a group of novels which flourished in Golden Age Spain beginning with Lazarillo de Termes (1 554) and ending with Estebanillo Gonzalez (1646). It has continued to be expressed in some contemporary novels of Germany and Italy, and, I believe, is present in the film Midnight Cowboy. The major difference in the picaresque narrative as expressed in the novel and in the film is not the content, but the narrator or story-teller. The novel is a pseudoautobiography narrated in the first person by a picaro, a type of rogue, who travels and observes, with his partial and necessarily prejudiced view, various social conditions, usually the seamy side of life. In the film Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo are picaros, but iruhis case it is the eye of the camera which provides the narration, with its various points of view, its sound track of words, music, noise and silence.
Some general statements about the picaresque novel of Spain will help to make clear the nature of the picaro and his narrative. Some critics define the picaro as a rogue and classify novels as picaresque or otherwise solely on the basis of whether the protagonists fit their definition. What Spanish picaresque novels of the Golden Age have in common is not solely a strictly defined character type, but primarily a particular novelistic technique ' and the themes of desire and disillusionment. It is this technique and the themes that should be used to discuss the picaresque tradition rather than an a priori definition of a character type.
The picaresque novel emerges as a "slice-of-life" pseudoautobiography in which the picaro, an eye-witness narrator, and frequently a social delinquent, is a histor2 (an inquirer and observer) who examines the past and presents his version of the truth, which is usually a critical view of society. The themes of desire and disillusionment appear in the picaresque novel in varying degrees and in several ways. Generally speaking, the picaro desires to improve his lot in life, but after failure or superficial success he is disillusioned (undeceived) for his life has not really improved. Beginning with the premise that the values of society are empty, that life is filled with illusion and deceit, he offers his own...