Novel Genres and Literary Analysis: From Pastoral to Picaresque

Novel Renaissance: New and Old Genres

Pastoral

Pastoral novels feature pastors and characters who are always involved in love affairs and set in an idealized place.

Byzantine

Byzantine novels star characters who are lovers that go through many difficulties, such as penalties and separations, but are finally reunited with a happy ending.

Picaresque

Picaresque novels star a rogue who must contrive to survive.

Cavalry

Cavalry novels had still grown in the revival, but they fell out of fashion because the public began to weary of their feats.

Sentimental

Sentimental novels look like pastoral novels, but the characters are too tearful, and people do not believe them and get tired of them.

The Picaresque Novel

The Picaresque novel appeared in 1554 with the publication of Lazarillo de Tormes, considered the first in this European genre. From there, the genre was exported to other European literature.

Traits

• For the first time, the main character is a rogue who acts in order to survive.
• The fight is between the rogue and adversity and has nothing to do with the battles of the knights, nor do they reach the most fame.
• It is narrated in the first person.
• Most of the novel is occupied with the childhood and adolescence of the protagonist.
• Style: Lazarillo's style is natural. The author intersperses the narrative passages and dialogues between the rogue and his masters. This is reflected through realism, even though it is fiction.

Importance of the Protagonist

The protagonist is an antihero. It is the first learning novel, where the protagonist learns to lie and steal. He can distinguish between good and evil through the masters in order to criticize the religious establishment. The public prefers adult jokes over naughty innocence.

Adequacy

The register used in a text must be appropriate to the communicative situation.

Aspects to Develop

The speaker's intention, the subject, and the channel used to convey the message.

Coherence

The text has the necessary information that we want to transmit, and that information is ordered and structured in a way that makes global sense.

To Do

• Select the most important ideas.
• Organize the activity in paragraphs.
• Ideas must be disposed of following the introduction, body, and outcome scheme.
• Opinion texts end with a conclusion.

Sentence Structure

Juxtaposition

Sentences are separated by commas or semicolons.

Subordination

• Noun: It bothers me that I am so nervous.
• Adjective: She has a friend who travels.
• Adverbial: Entered when they were going to sit.

Conjunctions

• Copulative: and, or
• Disjunctive: either, or
• Adversative: but, yet
• Distributive: some talked, others listened
• Explicative: now is the first goal, that is, has been proclaimed champion of the stage