The Life and Adversities of Lazarillo de Tormes

The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and his Fortunes and Adversities (better known as Lazarillo de Tormes) is a Spanish novel, written anonymously in first person and epistolary style (as one long letter). The earliest known edition dates from 1554. It is an autobiographical account of the life of a child, Lázaro de Tormes, in the sixteenth century, from his birth and miserable childhood to his marriage in adulthood.

A Picaresque Novel

It is considered the forerunner of the picaresque novel, with elements such as realism, first-person narrative, a structure roaming between multiple masters, and moralizing and pessimistic ideology.

Social Commentary

Lazarillo de Tormes is an outline of the ironic, ruthless society of the time. It shows its vices and hypocritical attitudes, especially those of the clergy and religious. There are different hypotheses about its authorship. The author was probably sympathetic to the ideas of Erasmus. This prompted the Inquisition to ban it, and later allow its publication, once edited. The work was not published in full until the nineteenth century.

Epistolary Style and Narrative

This novel, seemingly simple in structure, but in reality very complex, is a letter for Your Worship. This treatment implies someone with higher status and is motivated by "the case", which Lázaro has heard about. His personal version calls Lázaro, a party involved in it, to explain it ("I write to tell you in great detail the case"). So there must be some sort of confession, and the character is a high ecclesiastical dignitary, perhaps the Archbishop of Toledo, who has heard strange rumors about the bizarre sexual behavior of the Archpriest of San Salvador, under whom Lázaro is cohabiting with his wife, as we learn at the end of the book.

Literary Genre and Influences

The book's originality disrupts any mold and creates a specific literary subgenre: the realistic, picaresque novel. It uses parody of chivalric tales idealizing the Renaissance. The bombastic epics and books of warlike exploits of shepherds and courtiers, and angelic love, preclude an epic of hunger, which looks only to whatever is below the neck ruff and cares only for subsistence. This is in line with the realist tradition of Spanish literature, then revitalized by La Celestina and its sequels.