Description: Since the sixteenth century, Western literature has produced picaresque novels penned by authors across Europe, from Alemán, Cervantes, Lesage and Defoe to Cela and Mann. Contemporary authors of neopicaresque are renewing this traditional form to express twenty-first-century concerns. Notwithstanding its major contribution to literary history, as one of the founding forms of the modern novel, the picaresque remains a controversial literary category, and its definition is still much contested. The Picaresque Novel in Western Literature examines the development of the picaresque, chronologically and geographically, from its origins in sixteenth-century Spain to the neopicaresque in Europe and the United States.
Brief description: J. A. Garrido Ardila is Professor of Modern Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He is author of El género picaresco en la crítica literaria (2008), Novela picaresca en Europa, 1554-1753 (2009), and, most recently, author of Cervantes en Inglaterra, 2nd edition (2013) and editor of Textos del desastre: la última gran crisis (1898) (2013).
Review Quotes: 'A stellar cast of senior scholars takes on what must surely be one of the most controversial terms in literary criticism. Ardila's concise essay on the origins of the picaresque novel provides the necessary backdrop for the other essays ... Each essay is an excellent read, and the whole is a marvel of intelligent inquiry that will surely prompt more comparative interest. A must read for scholars of Hispanic and European literature, this is also a real contribution to the history of the novel in Western literature and deserves wide dissemination among the intellectually curious. Summing Up: Highly recommended.' K. M. Sibbald, Choice