Del Lazarillo a la tercera parte de Guzmán de Alfarache de Félix Machado de Silva y Castro: desarrollo y final del género picaresco

Abstract

Since the anonymous author of Lazarillo laid the foundations of a long tradition and the mischievous Guzmán de Alfarache gave it its greatest moments of splendour, between the 16th and 17th centuries, the genre we know as picaresque, with its conditions and specificities, begins a long process of wear and tear in which, step by step, novel by novel, will accuse more of the lack of elements that had defined it from the germ: The social criticism and the stark realism that characterised the first works were gradually replaced by an increasingly ostensible instructive intention that implacably showed how the new Tridentine morality was also dissolved in our prose. With the very special exception of Estebanillo González - the last great upturn in tone and style not at all in tune with his contemporary works - we could draw a chronological line from 1554 (the year of the first preserved edition of Lazarillo) to 1650 (the year of composition of this third part) to mark the birth and death of all our picaresque prose. It is the continuation of Machado de Silva, the latest model of a tradition that, conserving only part of its resources and form, manages to separate itself completely from its own picaresque intention in order, on the contrary, to offer Guzmán the path of purge and sanctity that Mateo Alemán and the rules of the genre would have always denied him.