Literary Concepts & Linguistic Terms: Picaresque Novel and Prose

Literary and Linguistic Concepts

Synonyms are terms that have the same or very similar meaning and therefore can be exchanged in certain phrases. Synonyms must belong to the same grammatical category. Antonyms are those terms that have opposite or contrary meanings. They also belong to the same grammatical category.

Understanding News Reporting

A news story is the account of a current event of interest for readers. For media content to be comprehensive and effective, it must answer the following questions:

• Who?
• What?
• When?
• Where?
• How?
• Why?

Lexical Fields in Language

A lexical field is formed by all those words that refer to the same subject or idea. It is also known as an ideological field. Dictionaries that group words by their meaning are called lexical thesauri.

The Semantic Field

• Causes of Semantic Change

  Linguistic causes: Changes that produce these causes stem from the substitution of some words by others, due to the use of metaphor or metonymy.

• Historical causes: These are shifts in the meaning of words that occur over time.

• Socio-political causes: Developments (political, religious, cultural, etc.) happening at a given time are reflected in the meanings of words.

The Picaresque Novel

As we said, the picaresque novel begins with Lazarillo de Tormes. Taking this work as its base, the picaresque genre achieved great success in this era. Besides the two mentioned, Guzmán de Alfarache and El Buscón, which saw numerous editions, we can also cite: La Pícara Justina, attributed to Francisco López de Úbeda; La Hija de Celestina, by Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo; Vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón, by Vicente Espinel; and Vida y hechos de Estebanillo González, hombre de buen humor, an anonymous work.

Key Characteristics of Picaresque Fiction

• The protagonist is of ignoble origin and must sharpen their wits to survive in a hostile society. Lacking ideals, they are literally the figure of the antihero.
• First-person account of their life, fortune, and adversity, from childhood to maturity. It is therefore an autobiographical novel.
• Serves several masters in different locations and is often doomed to bad company. All of this allows for a wide and varied knowledge of the era. One can speak of social criticism.
• Aims at social climbing.
• The story is usually presented as a letter addressed to a fictitious character, to whom the protagonist recounts their life.

Doctrinal Prose

It is a type of prose that developed during the Baroque period, in parallel with the picaresque novel. The main representative of didactic prose is Baltasar Gracián.

Baltasar Gracián: A Key Figure

Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658) was born in Belmonte de Calatayud (Zaragoza). When very young, he entered the Society of Jesus. Except for some time living in Catalonia, he resided most of his life in Aragon, mainly in Zaragoza, where he held a university chair. Due to his ecclesiastical status, he published his works under the pseudonym Lorenzo Gracián. His intellectual pursuits sometimes caused him trouble with religious authorities, especially at the end of his life. He died in Tarazona (Zaragoza).