The Swindler and Lazarillo de Tormes: Two Spanish Picaresque Novels

Description

These Spanish picaresque novels focus on the adventures of two unlikely heroes - delinquent picaros living by their wits among corrupt priests and prostitutes, beggars and idle gentleman, thieves, tricksters and murderers. The tales are sharply critical of the Church and the conventions of nobility, and contain grotesquely exaggerated depictions of the criminal underworld. Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), published anonymously, provided a literary model for Cervantes in Don Quixote and describes the ingenious ruses employed by a boy from Salamanca to outwit a succession of disreputable masters. Francisco de Quevedo's The Swindler (1626) is a comic, yet brutal and sordid account of a servant who wants to become a gentleman but ends up as a cardsharp and a common criminal. For this edition Michael Alpert has updated his translation from the original Penguin Classics edition, with a new map, chronology of events, notes and further reading.

Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645), author of The Swindler, was a prolific writer of poetry and prose and closely involved in Spanish and Italian politics. After killing an opponent in a duel in 1611, he moved to Italy where he spent some time as a prison governer, and some time imprisoned in a monastery as a result of his writings. The authorship of Lazarillo is unknown. Michael Alpert is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wesminster and has published widely on Spanish history.